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THE  NOON-MARK 


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THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA    •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &   CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE  NOON-MARK 


BY 

MARY  S.  WATTS 

Author  of  "The  Rise  of  Jennie  dishing,' 

"The  Boardman  Family,"  "From 

Father  to  Son,"  etc. 


<  :  ■     • 


■>   <-> 


jQeto  gork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1920 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1920, 
By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  October,  1920 


THE  NOON-MARK 


PROLOGUE 

THERE  was  a  time  in  the  history  of  this  nation 
when  every  considerable  city  in  it  strove 
more  or  less  consciously  to  imitate  the  most 
considerable  of  them  all,  the  city  of  New  York.  It  is 
a  strange  thing  to  look  back  upon  nowadays  when  the 
fashion  has  so  completely  gone  by,  and  the  cry  is  all 
for  individualism,  strong  characterization,  cultivating 
our  own  gardens,  drinking  from  our  own  cups.  We 
cherish,  we  emphasize  and  display  our  points  of  dif- 
ference, not  realizing  that  they  have  existed  all  along 
in  spite  of  us,  and  that  Detroit  —  for  an  instance  — 
was  never  any  more  like  Chicago  —  for  an  instance  — 
than  either  one  of  them  was  like  their  big  eastern 
model.  But,  let  the  rising  generation  believe  it  or 
not,  about  the  year  nineteen  hundred,  a  kind  of  diluted 
metropolitanism  flavored  us  all.  We  took  to  calling 
our  numbered  streets  avenues,  in  one  manifestation; 
in  another,  any  new  bridge,  square,  residence  district 
or  place  of  local  prominence  that  needed  a  name  at 
all  was  sure  to  be  baptized  from  the  New  York  direct- 
ory. Particularly  public  resorts  suffered  or  were 
glorified,  as  you  choose ;  every  "  Park,"  every  "  Beach," 
every  "  Heights  "  in  Manhattan  and  its  environs  had 
an  army  of  namesakes;  and  I  solemnly  believe  that 
there  was  no  city  through  the  whole  extent  of  these 
United  States  without  a  Coney  Island. 


dSKRafi 


2  THE  NOON-MARK 

The  mid- Western  Coney,  the  Coney  that  I  knew  best, 
was  not  an  island ;  indeed,  I  daresay  very  few  of  them 
were.  It  was  a  strip  of  land  lying  along  a  slight 
elevation  above  the  river,  ankle-deep  in  mud  or  dust 
according  to  the  season,  with  a  landing  for  the  steam- 
boats, Queen  and  Princess,  sl  thin  grove  of 
trees  —  nemorosa  ZacyntJws!  —  a  restaurant,  a 
dancing-platform,  a  carrousel,  the  entire  equipment 
in  short  of  its  innumerable  kindred  Coney  Islands. 
Pleasure-seekers  could  reach  it  by  a  five  or  six  mile 
ride  out  of  town  on  the  trolley-car  or  omnibus;  the 
automobile  had  not  yet  become  a  common  and  uni- 
versal vehicle  in  those  early  days  of  which  I  write; 
but  by  far  the  greater  number  journeyed  Coney-wards 
on  the  two  excursion-boats,  victims  of  an  illusion  of 
space  and  coolness  contributed  by  the  river.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  heat  and  glare  of  a  summer  day 
were  doubled  by  reflection ;  the  shady  side  had  a  trick 
of  becoming  the  sunny  side  all  of  a  sudden  just  when 
one  was  well-established,  owing  to  the  curves  of  the 
channel ;  forward  the  breeze  blew  your  hat  off,  and  to 
the  rear  it  came  laden  with  odors  of  coal-smoke, 
engine-grease,  everybody's  lunch-basket,  sundry  sewers 
emptying  in  nonchalantly  from  the  Kentucky  and 
Ohio  municipalities  on  either  shore,  and  the  Little 
Miami  stockyards.  It  was  crowded,  noisy,  comfort- 
less, in  a  word,  ideal ;  for  who  ever  heard  of  an  excur- 
sion boat  that  was  otherwise? 

Nevertheless,  as  an  earnest  seeker  after  truth  —  or 
after  that  variety  of  truth  which  we  imagine  to  be 
discoverable  only  among  crowds  —  I  have  been  to 
Coney  Island  by  the  boat  more  than  once  in  past 
times;  yea,  I  have  trudged  down  Sycamore  Hill  to 
the  wharf  in  the  beating  heat  of  July  afternoons,  and 


THE  NOON-MARK  3 

eke  have  trudged  up  again  through  the  sand  and  the 
imperishable  chick-weed  to  the  Island  portals;  I  have 
eaten  of  a  porterhouse  and  French-fried  potatoes  and 
have  drunk  a  mug  of  ale  in  the  restaurant,  and  have 
fared  thence  refreshed  and  shied  rings  at  stakes  (at, 
not  around,  for  I  was  never  much  of  a  shot),  and 
have  rattled  my  anatomy  about  on  all  manner  of 
toboggan-slides  and  shoot-the-chutes,  and  listened  to 
the  band  discoursing  antique  airs  —  rag-time  was  a 
novelty  then,  and  "  Annie  Rooney  "  the  latest  thing 
in  the  sentimental  line!  And  later  I  have  wended 
home  by  moonlight  on  the  deck  of  the  Princess  with 
the  calliope  going  (but  not  all  the  time,  mercifully), 
and  tired  babies  crying,  and  untired  ones  romping,  and 
couples  spooning  in  dark  corners,  generally  around 
the  smoke-stack,  and  the  smells  smelling  stronger  than 
ever  in  the  night  air.  All  of  this  I  saw  and  part  of 
it  I  wTas  twenty  years  or  so  ago,  heigh-ho !  They  drink 
no  more  ale  at  Coney  since  reform  invaded  us;  those 
spooners  have  doubtless  been  married  this  long  while ; 
the  babies  may  actually  have  babies  of  their  own  cry- 
ing or  romping  in  the  same  old  fashion ;  the  Princess 
went  down  the  river  the  dreadful  winter  of  '17-'18  to 
an  epic  end  in  the  ice-jam  above  Louisville,  and  an- 
other Princess  rides  in  her  stead  —  all,  all  are  gone, 
the  old,  familiar  faces. 

Perhaps  some  of  them  are  no  great  loss ;  and  it  may 
as  well  be  stated  frankly,  that  using  one's  best  en- 
deavor, the  search  for  truth  was  not  notably  forwarded 
on  these  occasions,  truth  appearing  to  be  as  shy  of 
the  company  of  the  proletariat  as  of  those  upper 
classes  about  whose  shortcomings  we  hear  so  much. 
The  Coney  Island  visitors  may  have  had  less  in  their 
pockets  than  certain  other  visitors  to  certain  other 


4  THE  NOON-MARK 

resorts  of  greater  fame  and  cost;  and  therefore,  ac- 
cording to  popular  notions,  they  must  have  had  a  deal 
more  in  their  heads  and  hearts ;  but  it  seemed  to  one 
student,  at  least,  that  there  was  not  a  pin  to  choose 
between  the  two.  You  heard  gossip  on  the  Coney 
boats  as  you  hear  gossip  in  the  most  exalted  drawing- 
rooms,  some  of  it  mean,  some  good-natured,  some 
uttered  in  mere  idleness.  You  witnessed  the  same 
exhibitions  of  folly  and  greed  and  cowardice  and  lust 
that  you  witnessed  everywhere,  you  were  blessed  and 
uplifted  by  the  same  spectacles  of  self-denial  and 
courage  and  cleanliness  and  plain  common-sense. 
Verily,  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun  —  nothing 
new  in  men  and  women,  at  any  rate.  Among  all  my 
Coney  Island  voyages,  I  can  recall  only  one  encounter 
that  differed  from  a  thousand  other  encounters,  or 
moved  one  to  speculation  as  to  the  past,  present  or 
future  of  a  single  person  that  figured  therein. 

The  deck-house  is  encircled  by  a  bench  that  travel- 
ers may  take  advantage  of  its  shade,  which,  however, 
as  has  been  noted,  fluctuates  with  a  fine  impartiality 
so  that  no  one  can  be  unduly  favored ;  there  mothers 
sit  with  nursing  babies,  and  picnicing  working-girls 
open  their  shoe-boxes  and  paper  bags,  and  old  women 
drowse  or  chatter  or  shepherd  the  grandchildren.  It 
seems  to  be  feminine  territory  by  unvoiced  common 
consent,  for  one  seldom  sees  a  man  there.  The  men 
prefer  camp-stools  along  the  rail  for  the  fuller  free- 
dom of  movement  perhaps,  and  the  handiness  of  the 
water  as  a  waste-basket ;  you  may  behold  them  aligned 
there  by  the  scores  in  the  silent  or  talkative  sociabil- 
ity of  which  men  have  the  secret;  and  though  they 
have  all  unquestionably  gone  to  Coney  many  times  on 
these  very  boats  and  must  be  thoroughly  acquainted 


THE  NOON-MARK  5 

with  the  laws  of  river-travel  as  enforced  aboard  the 
Queen  and  Princess,  it  inevitably  arrives  during  the 
course  of  every  trip  that  one  of  them  stretches  his  legs 
and  hoists  his  feet  upon  the  rail,  and  is  incontinently 
reprimanded  and  made  to  desist  from  that  attitude  by 
the  boat-policeman,  who,  by  the  way,  is  never  seen  or 
heard  of  on  any  other  occasion.  No  one  knows 
why  the  rail  must  be  held  sacred  from  peoples'  heels, 
or  why  it  has  so  powerful  an  attraction  for  them,  no 
one  knows  where  the  policeman  lurks  between  whiles; 
but  this  thing  comes  to  pass  with  the  scheduled  regu- 
larity of  the  solar  system.  No  sooner  has  some  ad- 
venturer pushed  his  stool  a  pace  back,  elevated  his 
legs,  tilted  his  straw  hat  to  the  bridge  of  his  nose  or 
shoved  it  back  from  his  forehead  —  no  sooner  has  he 
made  this  comfortable  disposition  of  himself  than  the 
officer  turns  up! 

"  Here,  you !  Take  your  feet  off'n  that  rail.  That 
ain't  allowed,"  he  says,  not  sternly,  but  with  an  au- 
thentic air  of  force  held  in  reserve. 

"  Huh?  Oh,  all  right!  "  Nobody  ever  objects,  or, 
in  Coney  Island  speech,  "  starts  something  " ;  neigh- 
boring passengers  glance  incuriously,  and  sometimes 
a  parcel  of  youngsters  set  up  a  jubilant,  sing-song  out- 
cry :  "  Oo-oo-oo !  Daddy  had  to  take  his  feet  down ! 
You  had  to  take  your  feet  down,  Daddy !  Mommer, 
Mommer,  th'  p'leeceman  made  Daddy  take  his  feet 
down!"  which  raises  a  lazy  laugh.  But,  as  a  rule, 
the  episode  rouses  no  interest  whatever;  only  once 
did  I  see  it  lead  to  anything  —  on  that  single  occasion 
referred  to  already. 

The  man  admonished  dropped  his  feet  to  the  deck, 
and  meeting  the  indifferent  eye  of  the  man  alongside 
him,  grinned  and  remarked  that  the  management  was 


6  THE  NOON-MARK 

kind  of  careful  of  their  woodwork,  weren't  they?  The 
other  agreed  that  they  sure  were  with  a  perfunctory 
grin  in  his  turn.  But  the  next  instant  they  exchanged 
a  closer  scrutiny  wThich  merged  into  surprised  and 
tentative  recognition,  with  half-finished  ejaculations: 
"Can  you  beat  it—?"  "Well,  I  declare  —  !" 
"  Was  I  sitting  right  by  you  all  this  time  — ?  "  and  so 

on. 

One  was  "  Frank  "  and  one  was  "  Gus  " —  I  did  not 
catch  the  last  names,  if  indeed  they  were  uttered,  but 
the  "  Mrs.  Stieffel  "  or  "  Maggie  "  afterwards  inquired 
about  was  plainly  Frank's  wife.  The  men  were  a 
little  awkward  at  first,  shaking  hands,  eyeing  each 
other,  evidently  not  knowing  quite  where  or  how  to 
begin;  it  was  fifteen  years  since  Gus  left  here,  I  gath- 
ered, fifteen  years  since  they  had  last  met.  They 
seemed  to  have  been  fairly  intimate,  though  not  very 
close  friends,  in  the  old  days;  both  were  verging  on 
forty  now,  to  judge  by  their  looks.  They  finally 
settled  to  an  interchange  of  questions  about  them- 
selves and  the  "  old  crowd  "—  deaths,  marriages,  bus- 
iness failures  and  successes.  Gus  was  "  located  "  in 
Bangor,  Maine.     Hey?     Oh  yes,  he  left  Wilkesbarre 

—  let's  see  —  nearly  ten  years  before ;  yes,  it  was  all 
of  ten  years,  it  was  the  year  of  the  World's  Fair  —  the 
Chicago  World's  Fair.     He  never  liked  Wilkesbarre 

—  never  had  any  idea  of  locating  there  permanently. 
Bangor  was  a  good  town.  No,  he  didn't  expect  to  be 
here  any  length  of  time;  he'd  have  to  go  right  back. 
He  wouldn't  be  here  now,  fact  is,  only  an  old  uncle  of 
his  died  the  other  day  out  on  the  old  farm  down  the 
river  in  Anderson  Township,  and  he'd  had  to  come 
out  to  settle  up  the  estate.  Pretty  hot  and  he'd  been 
pretty  busy,  you  know,  or  he'd  have  tried  to  get  around 


THE  NOON-MARK  7 

and  look  up  some  of  the  folks  —  you  know  how  that 
is:  you  get  busy  and  your  mind's  on  things  back  home 
anyhow  — and  first  thing  you  know,  you've  got  to  go 
back  — you  know  how  that  is.  He  guessed  there'd 
been  a  good  many  changes;  saw  Hack  Johnson, 
though,  in  the  Recorder's  office  when  he  went  up  to 
the  Courthouse  on  some  of  his  estate  business.  Hack 
looked  just  the  same ;  he  was  training  with  that  public- 
office  crowd  before  he,  Gus,  went  away  — 

Frank,  for  his  part,  was  still  at  the  bank.  Yeah, 
he'd  stuck  right  there,  and  always  expected  to.  He 
wished  Gus  could  find  time  to  come  out  and  see  his 
place;  he'd  bought  a  nice  little  home  out  here  in 
Maplehurst  —  that  was  one  of  the  new  subdivisions, 
Gus  wouldn't  hardly  know  where  it  was,  but  you  took 
the  Kensington  Park  cars,  and  it  was  only  a  twenty- 
minutes  ride.  He'd  bought  a  home  there  when  it  was 
first  opened ;  got  it  all  paid  for  now.  He  wished  Gus 
would  come  out.  First  thing  Maggie  would  say  to 
him  when  he  told  her  about  their  running  across  each 
other  this  way  would  be :  "  Why,  Frank,  you  don't  tell 
me  you  let  him  get  away  without  me  seeing  him?' 
No,  she  wasn't  on  the  boat;  he  was  just  taking  the 
kids  up  to  Coney  and  back  for  the  river  ride  like  he 
often  did  Saturday  afternoons  through  the  summer. 
It  was  partly  to  give  their  mother  a  rest,  you  know ; 
tell  you,  a  woman  gets  mighty  tired  and  nervous  some- 
times with  a  houseful  of  kids,  and  one  or  another  of 
'em  into  something  the  whole  time  — good  children, 
you  know,  but  they're  children.  The  girls  were  get- 
ting so  they  were  more  help  to  her  now,  though. 
Hey?  Why,  sure!  His  oldest,  Nettie,  she  was  the 
oldest,  she  was  about  grown ;  she  was  in  her  third  year 
at  high  school  and  crazy  to  drop  it  and  get  into  some 


8  THE  NOON-MARK 

kind  of  work ;  they  want  their  own  money,  you  know, 
when  they  get  that  old.  Yeah,  sure,  he  had  a  girl 
sixteen  years  old.  Well,  it  seemed  funny  to  him,  too, 
when  he  stopped  to  think  about  it.  She  was  around 
somewhere  on  the  boat  with  the  rest  of  the  bunch, 
they'd  come  along  directly. 

Gus,  it  transpired,  was  married,  too  —  married  a 
Portland  girl,  but  they  had  no  family.  Whatever  had 
become  of  Joe  Peters?  Uh-huh.  You  don't  say !  He 
understood  Peabody  —  Jim  Peabody  he  meant,  of 
course,  he  didn't  mean  the  old  man,  lie  was  about 
ready  to  die  even  before  Gus  left  here  and  must  have 
passed  out  long  ago  —  but  he  understood  Jim  was 
making  good  with  the  old  machine-tool  business  at 
last ;  he  ran  into  him  in  New  York  here  recently,  and 
Jim  certainly  looked  as  if  things  might  be  coming  his 
way.  You  can  generally  tell,  you  know.  Hey?  Oh 
yes,  Jim  remembered  him  and  was  quite  friendly  — 
for  him,  that  is.  You  know  Jim  Peabody  never  was 
easy  to  know  —  one  of  these  kind  of  reserved  men  — 
all  right,  of  course,  but  kind  of  reserved. 

They  kept  on  talking,  and  presently  talked  them- 
selves into  confidences  which  both  may  have  after- 
wards regretted;  at  the  moment,  ironically  enough, 
their  gossip  brought  them  nearer  together  than  they 
ever  could  have  been  in  the  past.  I  took  Gus  to  be 
the  brighter  man,  probably,  but  Stieffel,  if  that  was 
his  name,  had  a  nice  face,  a  kindly,  honest  face ;  and  I 
liked  him  for  the  way  he  had  spoken  about  his  Maggie. 
Maplehurst  in  those  days  was  a  cheap,  over-built  little 
suburb,  with  box-like  brick  houses  and  peculiarly 
hideous  bungalows  crowded  on  lots  not  more  than 
thirty  feet  wide ;  and  I  pictured  Mrs.  Stieffel  cooking 
and  sewing  and  doing  all  the  work  of  the  house  from 


THE  NOON-MARK  9 

morning  to  night  without  any  maid  —  they  could 
scarcely  afford  a  maid  even  if  maids  would  consent  to 
live  in  Maplehurst  —  and  the  children  "  into  some- 
thing the  whole  time."  Undoubtedly  she  had  seen  her 
own  mother  drudging  as  hard  and  constantly ;  but  did 
that  deter  her  from  entering  upon  the  same  career 
when  young  Frank  Stieffel  came  a-wooing?  Maybe 
she  had  had  loftier  expectations  for  herself  and 
Frank,  but  was  she  therefore  disappointed  and  em- 
bittered now?  Why,  not  at  all!  Frank  was  good  to 
her,  he  had  no  reprehensible  habits ;  the  children  were 
trying  sometimes,  but  they  were  her  children  and  she 
loved  to  "  do  for  "  them ;  they  owned  their  own  home, 
very  likely  she  had  golden  oak  furniture  and  a  pianola 
and  lace  curtains ;  she  was  a  proud,  happy,  contented 
woman. 

"  That's  them  now,"  said  Frank ;  "  that's  Nettie,  the 
one  with  the  brown  hair.  No  use  trying  to  catch  her 
eye  —  they're  always  rubbering  around  every  direc- 
tion but  where  you  want  'em  to.  Wait  till  she  looks 
this  way,  and  I'll  give  her  the  high  sign." 

"Got  a  full  house,  haven't  you?"  said  the  other 
man,  indulgently  feigning  interest;  but  there  was  a 
note  of  real  feeling,  a  genuine  and  strong  admiration 
in  the  tone  in  which  he  added :  "  Say,  Frank,  those 
girls  are  peaches.  They  —  why,  they're  peaches,  both 
of  'em ! " 

His  enthusiasm  moved  me  to  some  "  rubbering  "  on 
my  own  account;  but  the  decks  were  crowded  alow 
and  aloft  with  straw  hats,  flowered  hats,  shirt-waists 
and  shirt-sleeves,  with  brown  heads,  bald  heads,  all 
sorts  of  heads ;  it  was  impossible  to  make  out  exactly 
where  or  at  whom  the  two  men  were  looking,  partic- 
ularly as  my  own  field  of  vision  comprehended  no 


10  THE  NOON-MARK 

young  women  answering  to  my  conception  of  peaches, 
whatever  Mr.  Gus's  might  be.  I  did  catch  sight,  how- 
ever, of  a  youthful  acquaintance,  namely:  Randon 
McQuair,  perched  on  a  packing-case  that  must  have 
been  voyaging  up  the  river  in  the  interests  of  the 
Coney  Island  soft-drink  dispensary  —  or  maybe  the 
hard  one;  it  had  GLASS,  HANDLE  WITH  CARE 
stencilled  along  the  side  over  which  Randy's  legs  were 
dangling  and  swinging.  He  looked  up,  squinting  his 
eyes  against  the  strong  glare  of  the  sky,  and  saw  me 
and  took  off  his  hat;  had  I  been  another  male,  or 
nearer  his  own  age  —  which  I  take  to  have  been 
seventeen  or  eighteen  at  this  date  —  he  might  have 
waved  at  me,  or  made  some  jocular  demonstration  in 
greeting;  but  even  in  these  informal  surroundings, 
from  one  deck  to  another  of  the  Coney  Princess,  Ran- 
don's  manner  to  a  middle-aged  friend  of  his  grand- 
mother's expressed,  as  always,  a  shy  and  manly  cour- 
tesy, uncalculated  and,  in  this  graceless  day,  singu- 
larly attractive. 

"  You'd  think  so,  if  you  had  to  buy  shoes  for  'em," 
Frank  said,  answering  his  companion's  first  comment 
with  a  specious  air  of  complaint;  actually  he  was 
bursting  with  pride  and  fondness.  "  Billy  —  that's 
that  towhead  with  the  red  balloon,  see  him?  — that 
kid's  death  on  shoes.  Looks  like  he  must  eat  'em,  he 
gets  through  'em  so  fast.  Why,  I  think  they're  some- 
thing on  looks  myself,  Gus.  I  guess  I  can  say  it ;  any- 
body can  see  they  don't  take  after  me.  The  one  with 
the  black  hair  isn't  mine  anyhow." 

"  Oh !     Well,  the  other's  pretty  enough  for  two." 
"  Yeah.     But  don't  all  the  girls  look  pretty  to  you 
nowadays?    And  young!     My  lordy,  it  seems  to  me 
they're  the  youngest  things  aUve !     Sign  I'm  growing 


THE  NOON-MARK  11 

old,  I  expect.     Don't  that  black-haired  one  remind  you 
of  anybody,  though?  " 

Gus  leaned  forward,  and  bestowed  a  long  stare  on 
the  black-haired  one  presumably,  though  even  with 
this  to  guide  me,  I  was  still  unable  to  identify  her. 
He  frowned  in  an  effort  of  memory,  then  shook  his 
head,  settling  back  and  turning  a  negative  grimace 
towards  his  friend. 

"  Nope.     Who  is  it?     Anybody  I  ought  to  know?  " 

"  Why,  yes.     She's  Mattie  Snyder's  girl." 

"You  don't  say?"  His  face,  however,  expressed 
no  spontaneous  interest;  perhaps  Gus  was  beginning 
to  tire  of  the  role  civility  had  imposed  on  him.  After 
all,  fifteen  years  had  intervened,  during  which  none 
of  these  people  had  missed  him  much  or  inquired  after 
him,  obviously;  and  it  was  a  far  cry  to  Bangor,  Maine, 
where  all  his  cares  and  associations  now  centered. 
"  You  don't  say?  "  he  repeated  mechanically.  "  Well, 
Mattie  used  to  be  some  looker.  Let's  see,  I  can't  seem 
to  recollect  much  about  her.     Who  did  she  go  with?  " 

"Why,  all  of  us  —  all  of  the  crowd.  She  was  a 
cousin  of  my  wife's.  The  Snyders  lived  in  one  of 
those  double-bricks  on  Western  Row  near  the  old  City 
Hospital,  remember?  " 

"Western  Row?  Oh,  sure!  Yeah,  I  remember. 
What's  become  of  Mattie?  " 

"  Why,  she's  dead,''  said  Frank,  his  features  putting 
on  and  almost  immediately  putting  off  a  seemly  grav- 
ity, after  the  fashion  of  most  of  us  when  reporting  a 
like  event.  "  Yes,  poor  Mattie's  been  gone  quite  a 
while.  Millie  lives  with  us ;  she's  just  about  our  girl's 
age,  so  we  took  her  after  her  father  and  mother  died." 

"Didn't  have  enough  of  your  own  already,  hey?" 
remarked  the  other  amused,  it  may  be  faintly  con- 


12  THE  NOON-MARK 

temptuous.  I  fancied  him  telling  himself  that  Frank 
Stieffel  always  was  easy. 

"  Oh  well,  my  wife's  folks,  you  know,  Gus.  You 
know  how  that  is ;  you  can't  hardly  refuse  sometimes," 
the  latter  said  deprecatingly.  "  The  child  hadn't  any- 
body, not  a  soul  —  and  nothing  to  live  on,  not  a  cent. 
We  didn't  want  her  depending  on  strangers.  Maggie 
worried  a  good  deal  over  it;  so  the  end  of  it  was  I 
just  picked  up  and  went  out  there  and  got  her  and 
brought  her  home." 

"Out  where?  Didn't  they  live  here?"  said  Gus, 
yawning  openly. 

"  No.     California." 

"  Gee  whizz !     That  was  a  good  ways  to  go." 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  mind  the  trip.  Fact  is,  it's  a  pretty 
nice  trip  — "  Here  they  ranged  off  on  a  discussion 
of  the  Californian  climate,  coast  scenery,  mountain 
scenery,  orange  and  lemon  ranches,  string-bean 
ranches,  oriental  labor,  bungalows,  irrigation  methods, 
and  so  on,  winding  up  with  the  declaration  that  it 
was  all  right  for  a  change,  but  give  them,  severally, 
Ohio  and  Maine. 

"  Trouble  is,  it's  too  kind  of  unnatural,"  Gus  ob- 
served profoundly.  "  You  get  tired  of  never  having 
to  worry  about  the  weather.  You  want  more  variety, 
even  if  it  isn't  so  pleasant.  And  take  the  people  out 
there.  Too  many  invalids  and  cranks  to  suit  me.  I 
never  met  anybody  from  California  yet,  that  wasn't 
nuts  about  something  or  other." 

"  Same  here !  "  And  hereupon  Frank,  not  without 
an  occasional  chuckle,  proceeded  to  relate  some  cor- 
roborative recollections.  Mattie's  husband,  this  fel- 
low Aymar  that  she  married,  Frank  had  met  only  once 
or  twice,  but,  by  all  accounts,  he  got  to  be  one  of  the 


THE  NOON-MARK  13 

nuttiest;  he  wasn't  that  way  when  they  went  there, 
you  know;  he  just  got  that  way  afterwards,  like  they 
all  seem  to.  When  they  were  married,  he  was  a  paint 
salesman;  he  was  travelling  for  the  Banner  Paint 
Company  —  Cleveland  concern  —  when  Mattie  met 
him.  He  seemed  to  be  making  a  pretty  good  living  at 
it;  Frank  guessed  he  knew  considerable  about  the 
paint  business.  Anyway,  the  company  sent  him  out 
to  Sacramento;  and  here  after  they'd  been  there  a 
year  or  so,  didn't  he  all  at  once  drop  the  paint  job,  and 
go  down  to  Los  Angeles,  and  next  thing  you  know  he 
was  running  some  kind  of  a  church  down  there  —  one 
of  these  new  religions,  you  know !  Xo,  it  wasn't 
Christian  Science,  it  was  some  kind  of  Hindoo  re- 
ligion, where  you  wore  one  of  those  turbans,  and  went 
into  trances.  They  called  him  B'hana  Upshei  —  suw 
thing,  they  did !  B,  apostrophe,  h  —  He  spelled  it 
out,  interrupted  by  his  own  and  his  companion's 
laughter.  In  unison,  they  inquired  if  you  could  beat 
it?  At  that,  Frank  asserted,  there  were  others;  the 
b'hana  had  quite  a  congregation.  They  paid  some 
kind  of  dues ;  it  was  one  of  these  sort  of  little  settle- 
ments or  communities,  you  know.  He  couldn't  under- 
stand  why  the  police  didn't  raid  the  place  once  in  a 
while ;  but  everything  goes  in  California !  He  judged 
the  b'hana  must  have  made  a  tolerably  good  thing  out 
of  it,  while  he  lasted.  After  all  you  don't  need  much 
to  live  on  in  California ;  nobody  cares  how  you  do,  or 
what  you  look  like;  it  was  an  easy  way  to  get  along, 
you  couldn't  deny  that.  Oh  yes,  he  was  there  two- 
three  days,  and  met  the  whole  boiling  of  b'hanas  and 
b'hanees  —  that's  what  they  called  the  women;  some 
of  'em  were  married  legally  and  some  not,  by  the  looks 
of  things.     He  didn't  ask.     He  just  got  the  little  girl 


14  THE  NOON-MARK 

and  cleared  out.  She  was  about  eleven  at  the  time. 
He  looked  serious  transiently,  expressing  the  convic- 
tion that  his  wife  was  right,  and  he  was  glad  to  get 
Millie  away  from  that  bunch ;  it  wasn't  any  place  for 
a  child,  especially  a  little  girl.  In  another  year  or 
two  they'd  have  gotten  her  filled  up  with  some  of  their 
off-color  notions  about  marriage  and  property  and  one 
thing  and  another.  As  it  was  —  he  burst  out  laugh- 
ing again  as  he  recited  how  he  had  corrected  the 
youngster  for  some  trifling  fault,  and  how  she  had 
retorted  upon  him  with  a  sublime  air  of  tolerance, 
that  their  souls  did  not  vibrate  in  the  same  plane ! 

"Didn't,  hey?7'  said  Gus,  grunting  appreciatively; 
"  Well,  right  then  I'd  have  vibrated  a  slipper  in  a 
plane  where  it  would  have  done  considerable  good  to 
her  body  —  and  chances  are  to  her  soul,  too.  If  you 
wanted  to  break  up  this  b'hana  foolishness  the  speed- 
iest way,  that  is." 

"  Oh,  well,"  Frank  said  in  his  humane  way.  "  I 
didn't.  If  she'd  been  my  own  young  one  —  but  your 
wife's  folks,  you  know.  You  know  how  you  feel  about 
that.  She's  gotten  over  most  of  it.  They  forget 
awfully  quick." 

This  was  only  one  of  a  dozen  manifestly  unconsid- 
ered and  unostentatious  speeches  he  made,  the  cumula- 
tive effect  of  which  was  to  re-affirm  within  me  the  con- 
viction that  Mr.  Frank  Stieffel  was  one  of  the  halo- 
less,  everyday  saints,  the  plain-man  saints  whom  we 
may  sometimes  come  across  on  this  pilgrimage.  Yes, 
he  was  a  saint  with  his  commonplace  features,  his 
thinning  hair,  his  well-worn  business  suit,  his  gim- 
crack  emblem  of  the  Order  of  Bears  or  Beavers  or 
some  other  nonsensical  society  in  his  buttonhole. 
Doubtless  he  entertained  erroneous  ideas  about  the 


THE  NOON-MARK  15 

time  and  place  to  use  toothpicks  and  the  way  to  hold 
a  fork;  doubtless,  too,  he  liked  to  take  off  his  coat  and 
collar  and  sit  stocking-footed  on  the  front  porch  hot 
summer  evenings  after  he  got  home  from  the  bank, 
reading  the  paper,  while  Maggie  rattled  among  the 
supper  dishes.  He  made,  at  a  guess,  about  twenty- 
one  hundred  a  year,  and,  at  another  guess,  he  would 
never  make  any  more;  there  was  no  hint  of  force  or 
ability  about  his  kind  and  simple  presence.  But  he 
was  a  saint,  for  all  that.  You  might  depend  on  him 
to  get  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night  and  help  with  the 
baby  when  it  fretted,  or  to  stoke  the  furnace  fire,  or 
to  go  out  and  hunt  up  that  wretched,  drink-ridden 
Lushead  next  door  when  poor  Mrs.  Lushead  came 
crying  and  reported  him  missing,  or  to  wear  the  same 
old  overcoat  for  five  winters  hand-running  so  that  he 
could  spare  the  money  to  have  little  Frank's  teeth 
straightened.  These  may  not  be  saintly  deeds;  of 
course  we  all  of  us  perform  them  whenever  occasion 
arises  cheerfully,  ungrudgingly,  tactfully  and  with  no 
idea  of  winning  applause  —  of  course !  Still  I  stick 
to  it  that  Frank  was  a  saint ;  and  seeing  that  this  is 
only  a  prologue  and  has  nothing  on  earth  to  do  with 
the  real  story,  I  may  be  allowed  to  have  my  say  for 

once. 

The  sun  changed  sides  just  as  Frank  and  Gus 
reached  this  point  in  their  dialogue ;  and  they  present- 
ly got  up  and  moved  around  to  the  shade  with  most  of 
the  other  passengers  in  our  vicinity  —  everybody  ex- 
cept myself,  indeed.  I  had  no  more  than  a  glimpse 
of  them  again,  when  we  were  leaving  the  boat,  and  I 
recognized  their  two  backs  ahead  of  me,  Frank's 
shoulders  rounded  and  stooping  a  little  in  his  blue 
serge  coat  that  was  rather  rubbed  and  shiny  in  places, 


16  THE  NOON-MARK 

and  the  other  quite  upright  and  natty  by  contrast. 
But  in  the  meanwhile  I  had  not  been  without  enter- 
tainment ;  for,  soon  after  the  change,  while  I  was  still 
sitting,  the  McQuair  boy  came  sauntering  along  the 
deck,  impervious  to  sun  or  shade,  in  company  with  a 
tall  and  extraordinarily  sightly  young  lady.  She 
was  very  trim  and  nice  in  the  starched  white  duck 
skirt  spreading  like  a  bell  about  her  ankles,  and  the 
white  linen  waist  with  a  stiff  high  collar  and  stiff  cuffs, 
which  all  the  girls  were  wearing  at  this  period.  Her 
thick,  rich,  copper-colored  hair  was  built  out  over  the 
contemporaneous  "  rat "  with  ever  so  many  puffs  and 
braids  and  little  curls,  on  top  of  which  there  was  sta- 
tioned a  wide-brimmed,  wide-crowned  hat  secured  by 
a  perfect  harpoon  of  a  pin  at  least  eighteen  inches 
long ;  all  in  all,  dress,  complexion,  teeth,  big  straight- 
forward eyes,  fine  regular  features,  she  was  nothing 
short  of  stunning.  But  it  was  actually  neither  her 
looks  nor  her  undeniable  style  that  fixed  my  attention ; 
it  was  the  fact  that  she  had  by  the  hand  a  stout  little 
boy  with  a  red  balloon  —  and  a  towhead,  too,  let  all 
the  gods  of  chance  bear  witness!  Two  or  three  or 
half  a  dozen  more  children  of  varying  ages  and  sizes 
trailed  around  —  I  had  no  time  to  determine  which  or 
how  many  of  them  were  Stieffels,  for  on  the  instant 
some  one  cried  out :  "  Wait,  Net !  "  and  there  came 
running  a  second  young  girl,  laughing  and  ejaculating 
and  flashing  another  pair  of  beautiful  eyes  at  Randy, 
who,  naturally  enough,  never  saw  me,  never  even  cast  a 
look  in  my  direction  this  time.  They  all  three  sat 
down  in  front  of  me. 

Girl  Number  Two  was  just  as  pretty  as  Netty,  but 
not  nearly  so  crisp,  smart,  soignee.  Her  pink  sash- 
ribbon  needed  pressing,  her  all-over-embroidery  skirt 


THE  NOON-MARK  17 

hung  limp,  and  a  thought  unevenly  at  the  hem;  per- 
haps it  was  harder  to  dress  her  than  the  other,  her 
young  figure  being  a  good  deal  fuller,  with  more 
suggestion  of  softness,  somehow.  Nettie  had  the  half- 
ripe  and  graceful  lankiness  of  a  sixteen-year-old 
Diana;  her  throat  was  thin,  her  firm  little  chin  al- 
most sharp  where  Millie's  rounded  sweetly ;  her  eyes 
were  bright  and  steady  as  a  bird's,  and  I  think  she 
had  no  idea  of  making  play  with  them  under  their 
long,  thick  lashes  at  young  McQuair;  whereas  Miss 
Millie  brought  hers  into  action  at  once,  after  the  oldest 
and  best-known  methods.  As  for  Randy,  he  gallantly 
divided  his  attention  between  them,  as  might  have 
been  expected  of  him ;  and,  as  might  also  have  been 
expected,  he  was  very  patient  and  good-tempered  and 
efficient  in  helping  Nettie  manage  her  crew  of  small 
brothers  and  sisters.  She  seemed  to  realize  a  respon- 
sibility about  them  much  more  keenly  than  the  Millie 
girl,  as  was  perhaps  natural. 

The  thing  that  was  not  in  the  least  natural,  the  thing 
not  to  be  expected  or  accounted  for  about  this  whole 
business  was  that  it  could  happen  at  all.  I  humbly 
hope  and  trust  that  I  am  no  snob ;  I  believe  that  the 
old  lady  McQuair  was  not.  She  was,  on  the  contrary, 
a  fine  old  gentlewoman  who  would  no  more  make  dis- 
tinctions between  people  than  —  than  any  other  fine 
old  gentlewoman.  Nevertheless,  it  was  impossible 
not  to  view  with  wonder  and  misgivings  her  grandson 
Randon  in  this  Stieffel  circle.  What  was  he  doing 
there?  How,  how  under  the  heavens  had  he  ever  come 
to  know  the  Stieffel  girl,  the  Aymar  girl  ?  And,  know- 
ing them,  how  could  he  not  only  stand  them,  but,  as 
it  would  seem,  seek  them?  Not  that  they  were  not 
nice  girls,  well-behaved  girls ;  all  three  young  people 


18  THE  NOON-MARK 

did  and  said  nothing  that  any  other  three  young  peo- 
ple, even  of  the  loftiest  caste,  the  McQuair  caste 
itself,  might  not  have  done  and  said.  But  —  but 
— !  It  goes  to  show  that  nobody  can  tell  what  a  boy 
will  do,  remote  from  the  maternal  or  grandmaternal 
eye.  You  may  bring  him  up  by  the  most  rigid  formu- 
las, or  by  no  formulas  whatever,  it's  all  one.  Let  him 
escape  for  a  single  hour,  and  he  will  revert  to  the 
aboriginal  male.  Girls  are  different;  they  harden  in 
the  mold  into  which  they  are  run. 

The  youngsters'  talk  was  not  especially  diverting, 
mostly  giggles  and  glances,  occult  allusions,  jokes  to 
which  they  alone  held  the  key.  Once  when  it  seemed 
to  falter  for  a  moment,  Millie  reached  out  and  took 
a  book  from  the  side-pocket  of  Randon's  summer  coat, 
and  opened  it  with  lazy  curiosity,  riffling  the  leaves. 

"  '  Poetic  Parables,'  "  she  read  aloud.  Her  voice 
was  light  and  pleasant,  well-placed,  free  from  either 
the  nasal  or  the  guttural  quality  sadly  common 
amongst  us ;  and  she  read,  to  my  surprise,  with  facility 
and  a  certain  taste.  "  What  does  it  mean  by  poetic 
parables?  " 

"  Why,  sort  of  short  stories,"  said  Randy,  in  some 
embarrassment.  Perhaps  he  was  vaguely  aware  that 
poetic  parables  were  not  conspicuously  suited  to  the 
present  company;  perhaps,  indeed,  he  suspected  that 
they  were  not  conspicuously  suited  to  himself,  and  had 
all  the  young  man's  painful  dread  of  being  laughed  at 
for  either  real  or  sham  erudition.  "  It's  a  Library- 
book.  I  just  happened  to  pick  it  up,  and  thought  I'd 
take  it  home,r  he  explained  hastily. 

"  I  like  short  stories  —  if  they're  good,"  said  Nettie. 
"  I  can't  read  long  ones.     It  takes  too  much  time." 

"  Here's  one :  '  The  Fox/  by  Kahlil  Gibran  —  funny 


THE  NOON-MARK  19 

name !     He  must  be  foreign,"  Millie  announced,  and 
forthwith  read : 

"  A  fox  looked  at  his  shadow  at  sunrise  and  said, 
'  I  will  have  a  camel  for  lunch  today.'  And  all  morn- 
ing he  went  about  looking  for  camels.  But  at  noon 
he  saw  his  shadow  again  —  and  he  said,  '  Oh,  well,  a 
mouse  will  do/  " 

After  a  brief  expectant  pause,  Nettie  said :  "  Well, 
go  on,  why  don't  you?  " 

"  There  isn't  any  more.  That's  all  of  it." 
"Wha-at?  Oh,  you!  Go  on,  read  the  rest  of  it." 
"  No,  honestly  it  ends  right  there.  That's  all,  hon- 
estly. Here,  look  for  yourself,  if  you  don't  believe 
me."  Millie  held  the  open  book  towards  her,  and 
Nettie  studied  the  page  whereon/'  The  Fox  "  appeared, 
with  frank  disbelief  that  gradually  gave  place  to  frank 
astonishment. 

"  Well,  of  all  things !  "  she  exclaimed,  and  appealed 
to  Randon  in  a  popular  catch-phrase  of  the  day. 
"  What  do  you  know  about  that?  I  like  'em  short, 
but  not  that  short.  Why,  it  doesn't  make  sense.  It's 
hardly  got  any  beginning  or  end.  Are  they  all  that 
way?     The  rest  of  the  book?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  I  haven't  read  it  all  yet,"  said  the 
boy  awkwardly.  He  must  have  been  too  young  to 
grasp  the  whole  significance,  at  once  humorous  and 
melancholy,  of  Kahlil  Gibran's  fantasy,  but  he  had 
some  inkling  of  it;  and  I  think  the  girl's  unimagin- 
ative comment  somehow  jarred  on  him.  He  looked 
at  Millie,  and  that  budding  tactician  immediately  took 
the  hint !  To  a  dead  certainty,  she  had  no  more  idea 
than  Nettie  what  the  parable  was  all  about,  but  she 


20  THE  NOON-MARK 

was  too  acute  to  betray  herself;  her  voice  and  her 
answering  look  conveyed  a  sympathetic  understanding 
which  fell  short  of  perfection  only  by  being  too  per- 
fect !  —  the  specific  fault  of  inexperience.  But  she 
would  learn.     Miss  Mildred  Aymar  would  learn. 

"Isn't  Net  funny,  though?  She  doesn't  care  for 
books,  you  know.  I  do.  I  love  to  read,  don't  you? 
I'd  love  not  to  have  to  do  anything  else  —  just  read 
all  day  long !  I  think  this  is  fascinating  —  it's  so  sort 
of  veiled  and  mysterious.  Would  you  mind  lending 
it  to  me?     I'd  be  awfully  careful  of  it." 

"  For  goodness1  sake,  Millie,  don't  you  know  he 
can't  lend  a  Library-book?"  said  Nettie,  not  too 
amiably.  She  was  evidently  a  practical  young  person, 
and  it  might  be  that  the  other's  unpracticalities  vexed 
her,  or  again  it  might  be  —  but  who  will  pretend  to 
fathom  the  feminine  mind  at  sixteen?  "  She  can  put 
her  name  in  to  get  it  as  soon  as  you  take  it  back. 
We've  got  a  Library-card," 'she  advised  in  a  brisk  and 
capable  style  —  too  brisk,  too  capable,  alas!  She 
would  never  learn,  Miss  Nettie  Stieffel  would  never 
learn. 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right.  That's  all  right,  of  course  — " 
said  Randon  confusedly.  "  You  can  have  the  book 
any  time  you  want  it."  By  the  fleeting  look  of  ab- 
straction in  his  eyes,  I  judged  that  Mr.  McQuair 
whose  monthly  allowance  of  spending-money  could 
not  have  been  very  spacious,  was  taking  a  rapid  mental 
survey  of  assets  and  liabilities,  and  wondering  what 
he  could  go  without  in  order  to  buy  and  present  to 
the  young  lady  a  copy  of  "  Poetic  Parables  " ;  a  dollar 
and  a  quarter  is  a  devastating  sum  under  certain  con- 
ditions. 


THE  NOON-MARK  21 

The  Coney  Island  excursion  and  the  above  related 
adventure  —  so  to  call  it  —  came  to  an  end  shortly 
thereafter.  We  all  landed  and  went  onr  separate 
ways,  as  the  characters  will  continue  to  do  hencefor- 
ward, unconscious  of  my  all-seeing  eye,  and  nowise 
subject  to  my  influence.  For,  as  I  have  said,  I  only 
fancied  thus  and  so  about  them,  what  they  were, 
what  they  had  done,  what  they  would  do;  let  us  see, 
if  you  please,  how  near  I  came  to  the  truth.  This 
Prologue  is  ended;  the  introductory  speeches  are 
made,  lacking  nothing  of  the  dullness  of  all  introduc- 
tory speeches ;  and  it  only  remains  for  the  speaker  to 
bow  and  withdraw. 


IT  was  about  the  year  eighteen  eighty-five  that 
young  Frank  Stieffel,  having  got  a  raise  in  his 
salary  at  the  Travelers'  And  Traders1,  corner  of 
Orchard  and  Fourth,  where  he  had  started  in  as  bank- 
messenger  and  gradually  worked  up  to  the  accounting 
department,  felt  himself  at  last  free  to  get  married. 
His  mother  died  the  winter  before,  so  Frank  would 
not  have  that  care  any  longer,  and  his  sister  Julia 
had  a  good  job,  skirt-fitter  with  Fritsch,  Ladies' 
Tailor-Made  Suits  and  Habits,  up  on  Seventh  Street. 
Maggie  Lindtner  said  yes,  and  they  had  a  nice  wed- 
ding, and  a  honeymoon  week  at  Niagara  Falls;  and 
when  they  came  back,  set  up  housekeeping  in  one  of  the 
Primrose  Flats  down  on  South  Fourth,  only  six  or 
seven  squares  from  the  bank.  Frank  could  come  home 
to  luncheon,  which  he  had  ingenuously  calculated 
upon  as  an  economy,  to  say  nothing  of  the  delights  of 
another  meal  in  his  own  home  with  his  wife;  and  in 
fact  he  did  come  home  regularly  for  the  first  six 
months  or  so.  After  that,  the  neighbor  flat-dwellers, 
benevolently  interested  behind  their  window-curtains, 
passed  the  word  around  that  you  couldn't  set  your 
watch  by  "  him  "  any  more ;  only  twice  the  last  few 
weeks,  and  now  only  on  Saturdays,  when  the  bank 
and  all  the  business-offices  closed  early;  the  women, 
exchanging  significant  glances,  opined  that  cooking 
three  times  a  day  was  too  much  for  "  her  " — "  And 
she's  not  crazy  about  work,  anyhow/7  the  sharper- 

22 


THE  NOON-MARK  23 

tongues  (who  are  never  lacking  in  any  society)  re- 
marked. But  they  were  one  and  all  very  kind  about 
snatching  time  from  their  own  busy  kitchens  to  help 
in  hers,  running  in  and  sitting  with  her,  cooking  little 
dainties,  crocheting  little  garments,  liberal  in  both 
advice  and  entertainment.  That  the  first  was  tepidly 
received  and  never  followed,  they  overlooked  in  the 
warmth  of  the  welcome  accorded  the  second.  Young 
Mrs.  Stieffel  loved  to  talk  —  she  said  so  herself  — 
loved  to  be  talked  to,  loved  to  hear  the  newest  news, 
or  even  news  that  was  more  or  less  old,  provided  it  be 
sufficiently  racy,  high-colored,  dramatic. 

Left  to  herself,  in  default  of  a  good,  tasty  piece  of 
gossip,  she  would  read;  she  loved  to  read,  too. 
Classics  from  "  The  Seaside  Library  "  and  the  "  Fire- 
side Companion,"  paper-backed  romances  by  Laura 
Jean  Libbey,  by  Miss  Braddon,  by  Bertha  M.  Clay,  by 
Anna  Katherine  Green,  cumbered  her  pantry-shelves, 
rather  to  the  detriment,  if  the  truth  must  be  told,  of 
the  saucepans,  tableware  and  housewifely  provisions 
popularly  considered  to  have  the  prior  right  there. 
Mrs.  Maggie  would  sometimes  forget  the  dull  routine 
of  dishwashing  and  bed-making  in  favor  of  a  rocking- 
chair  and  an  engrossing  story;  and  after  all,  who 
could  blame  her?  She  was  just  a  young  girl,  intro- 
duced all  at  once  to  the  drudgeries  and  responsibilities 
of  wifehood,  with  motherhood  imminent  in  the  offing; 
like  all  youth,  she  had  the  valor  and  the  carelessness 
of  inexperience,  did  not  know  how  to  do  anything,  did 
not  want  to  do  anything,  and  was  not  apprehensive 
about  anything.  The  more  mature  women  talked  her 
over  amongst  themselves  with  amusement,  wonder  and 
pity,  dashed  occasionally  with  an  impatience  for  which 
they,  too,  could  scarcely  be  blamed. 


24  THE  NOON-MARK 

"  No  use  telling  her  anything,  she  hasn't  got  any 
idea  of  what  she's  up  against,"  one  would  confide  to 
another.  "  She's  awful  young,  of  course,  but  —  May- 
be I  was  just  as  phootling  right  at  the  beginning,  but 
I  don't  know  —  Seems  to  me  I  did  think  about  doctors' 
bills,  and  the  baby's  clothes,  and  whether  it  was  go- 
ing to  be  a  boy  or  girl,  and  how  we  was  going  to  make 
out  on  Jim's  pay,  and  s'posing  something  happened  to 
him,  what  would  I  do,  and  all  things  like  that,  you 
know.  Seems  like  it's  kinda  natural  to  worry  —  be- 
sides being  scared  to  death  of  the  end.  I  wouldn't  say 
anything  to  scare  her  for  the  world,  but  it's  funny  she 
ain't  scared  anyhow.  Oh,  I  know  lots  of  'em  say 
they're  not,  but  they  are,  just  the  same  —  scared  out 
of  their  lives;  and  good  reason  to  be!  But  she  don't 
care  —  just  plain  don't  care  or  don't  re'lize.  Not 
about  her  looks,  nor  about  what  the  kid's  going  to 
wear,  nor  nothing.  Well,  it's  all  right,  of  course,  but 
—  I  ain't  built  that  way,  that's  all !  " 

"  She's  looking  for  her  mother  to  do  for  her,  like 
she  always  has,"  the  other  would  surmise  sagely. 
"  She  acts  like  one  of  the  kind  that  their  mothers 
haven't  ever  left  do  anything  for  theirselves,  just 
waited  on  'em  hand  and  foot.  I  heard  Mis'  Lindtner 
had  property,  too,"  she  finished  thoughtfully  —  and 
not  so  irrelevantly  as  might  appear  on  the  surface. 

The  lady  in  question,  however,  displayed  no  marked 
efficiency  and  even  less  interest  on  her  infrequent 
visits  to  her  daughter's  home.  Mrs.  Lindtner  was  a 
listless,  worn-out  woman  of  fifty-odd  who,  having  had 
six  or  eight  children,  not  unnaturally  regarded  the 
coming  event  as  nothing  out  of  the  way  or  worthy  of 
especial  exertion  on  her  part.  For  the  rest,  everybody 
agreed  that  it  was  easy  to  see  Maggie  came  rightly  by 


THE  NOON-MARK  25 

her  taste  for  fiction  —  in  whatever  form  —  and  her 
disposition  to  let  everything  else,  including  herself, 
slide;  there  would  be  two  of  them  rocking  and  reading 
when  the  neighbors  dropped  in,  now.  The  sewing- 
machine  continued  to  stand  idle;  the  kitchen  was  no 
cleaner  and  no  busier  because  of  the  maternal  pres- 
ence. Frank  Stieffel  came  home  every  day  loaded 
down  with  canned  eatables,  with  packages  from  the 
bakery  and  delicatessen,  as  before ;  he  was  reported  to 
have  gotten  up  and  made  his  own  coffee  more  than 
one  morning;  and  by  some  of  the  more  searching  and 
conscientious  observers  to  have  been  seen  washing 
the  dishes  at  nine  o'clock  at  night  after  their  ready- 
to-serve  dinner  was  over  when  his  wife  had  gone  to 
bed  and  his  mother-in-law  to  church.  "  Nothing  like 
taking  things  easy ! "  Mrs.  Downstairs  commented  to 
Mrs.  Upstairs  ironically.  There  is  something  about 
the  spectacle  of  another  woman's  husband  washing 
her  dishes  that  will  arouse  the  mildest  of  wives  to  a 
singular  pitch  of  scorn  and  indignation;  she  would 
rather  her  John  Henry  came  home  drunk  and  smashed 
the  furniture  than  have  him  fall  so  low  as  to  wash 
the  dishes. 

In  the  end  —  that  is  to  say,  a  bare  six  weeks  before 
little  Nettie's  arrival  —  it  was  Frank's  sister  who 
took  matters  in  hand,  and  made  sure  of  the  baby's 
comfort  at  any  rate;  perhaps  she  was  not  so  much 
concerned  about  the  mother's.  Miss  Julia  Stieffel  was 
already  verging  on  old-maidhood ;  she  was  nearly 
thirty,  her  brother's  senior  by  two  or  three  years ;  but, 
spinster  and  all,  she  evinced  ten  times  as  much  good- 
will and  capacity  for  dealing  with  the  situation  as 
both  the  other  women  put  together.  If  her  knowledge 
of  babies  was  theoretical,  she  herself  was  eminently 


26  THE  NOON-MARK 

practical.  Julia  had  worked  hard  and  made  her  own 
living,  at  first  in  part  but  very  soon  wholly,  from  the 
day  she  started  out  wrapping  packages  at  the  Bon 
Marche  when  she  was  fourteen  up  to  the  present  mo- 
ment. She  was  a  swarthy,  bony,  heavy-browed  girl 
with  a  rasping  nasal  voice,  and  a  figure  which  sundry 
wags  averred  to  be  the  worst  possible  advertisement 
for  the  tailor's  establishment  that  employed  her,  thin 
without  being  slender,  like  a  shingle.  She  was  a 
walking  caricature  of  the  modes;  they  said  it  was  a 
wonder  Fritsch  dared  to  have  her  around  his  place. 
As  a  skirt-fitter  she  was  unexcelled,  yet  her  own  skirts 
hung  any  way  and  every  way;  her  belts  and  blouses 
never  met,  her  hats  were  piteous.  To  all  hints  or 
suggestions,  Julia  would  retort  impatiently  that  she 
Avas  too  busy  with  other  people's  things  to  fuss  with 
her  own,  and  much  those  ladies  cared  what  she  looked 
like,  didn't  they?  They  paid  to  have  their  skirts  fit- 
ted, they  didn't  pay  to  see  a  swell  dresser.  It  was  the 
truth ;  she  was  too  busy ;  industry  was  an  obsession 
with  her.  Her  scissors  clashed,  her  needle  flew,  her 
machine  thundered  all  through  Fritsch 's  day  and  as 
far  into  the  night  as  he  exacted.  Julia  had  never 
heard  of  the  forty-eight  hour  week,  or  of  time-and-a- 
half  for  over-time,  nor  indeed  had  anybody  else  at 
that  date ;  but  even  if  she  had  it  may  be  doubted  if  she 
would  have  insisted  on  her  rights  or  taken  the  meas- 
ures so  popular  nowadays  to  secure  them.  She 
worked  for  work's  sake  as  much  as  for  her  eighteen 
dollars  a  week;  the  desire  was  native,  even  if  it  had 
not  been  ingrained  by  habit  and  necessity. 

So  Julia  came  down  to  the  Primrose,  every  day  after 
hours,  and  all  day  Sundays,  in  defiance  of  the  opin- 
ions of  the  righteous,  with  a  roll  of  fine  goods,  lawn, 


THE  NOON-MARK  27 

embroidery,  flannel  or  what-not  which  she  had  bought 
out  of  the  savings  from  her  weekly  eighteen  under  one 
arm,  with  her  thimble  and  her  rapacious  scissors, 
with  floss  silks  and  tiny  lace  buttons,  with  the  spec- 
tacles she  had  lately  been  obliged  to  mount ;  and  cut, 
snipped,  stitched,  stitched,  stitched  for  the  baby  with 
an  energy  nothing  short  of  diabolical  in  the  eyes  of 
the  other  two  women.  It  did  not  offend  them  by  con- 
trast with  their  own  leisure,  nor  did  it  occur  to  them 
to  emulate  it;  they  merely  wondered  and  were  awed. 

"  She  never  uses  any  pattern,  not  a  single  smitch 
of  a  one  —  just  cuts  out  by  her  eye!"  Mrs.  Stieffel 
declared  with  sincere  admiration.  "  My,  I'd  give  any- 
thing if  J  could !  But  there  wouldn't  be  any  use  my 
trying,  even  with  a  pattern.  I  can't  make  head  or 
tail  out  of  'em.  I'd  only  spoil  the  stuff,  and  it  would 
be  just  plain  straight-out  waste  of  money.  I  never 
could  learn  to  sew." 

"  'Tain't  anything.  Any  fool  can  learn  if  they  want 
to,"  said  Julia,  grimly  biting  off  a  thread.  "  As  long 
as  you're  just  setting  there  with  nothing  else  on  hand, 
Maggie,  you  might  pull  the  basters  out  of  this  while 
I'm  runnin'  tucks,  will  you?  Say,  Mis'  Lindtner, 
don't  you  b'lieve  you  better  stir  that  apple-sauce? 
Smells  to  me  like  it  was  scorching,  and  it's  easier  for 
you  to  get  up  than  me  with  my  lap  full." 

"Ain't  she  the  bossy  one,  though?"  said  Frank, 
smiling  a  little  uneasily,  glancing  at  his  wife  and 
mother-in-law.  But  they  complied  amiably,  without 
dreaming  of  resenting  Julia's  bossiness.  Setting  a- 
side  the  fact  that  it  saved  them  the  trouble  of  planning, 
or  of  making  decisions,  it  seemed  proper  to  her  char- 
acter and  achievements  to  boss.  Anybody  who  could 
do  what  Julia  did,  they  said  —  and  honestly  thought 


28  THE  NOON-MAKK 

—  had  a  right  to  go  ahead  her  own  way,  and  have 
other  people  stand  around  — "  Even  if  she  does  fly  out, 
and  pretty  near  bite  your  head  off  sometimes/'  Maggie 
said  leniently.  "  She  don't  mean  it.  She  just  gets 
nervous,  and  no  wonder!  Look  how  she  drives!  I 
hate  to  see  her  driving  that  way,  but  she  will  do  it, 
you  can't  make  her  spare  herself.  I  only  hope  and 
pray  she  wron't  break  down  some  day,  that's  all. 
Julia's  as  good  as  can  be  to  all  of  us,"  Maggie  said,  her 
eyes  filling.  It  never  entered  her  head  to  lighten 
Julia's  cares  and  labors  by  taking  some  part  of  them 
upon  herself;  she  would  have  explained  that  Julia 
might  not  like  it.  Julia  was  so  particular,  she, 
Maggie,  was  afraid  of  interfering,  even  though  the 
present  business  was  surely  her  legitimate  concern. 
Miss  Nettie  Stieft'el  came  on  the  scene  with  an  up- 
to-the-minute  readiness  and  expedition  which  would 
have  engaged  her  aunt's  good  graces,  even  if  the  latter 
had  not  been  already  in  a  welcoming  mood.  In  after 
years  Julia  used  to  assert  that  Nettie  never  made  any- 
body wait  a  second  or  gave  anybody  a  bit  of  trouble, 
not  even  when  she  was  born !  "  Maggie  didn't  have 
more  than  time  to  get  her  breath  for  a  good  yell  when 
there  the  baby  wras !  And  that's  the  way  Net's  been 
ever  since.  You  always  know  wThere  she  is,  and  if  you 
don't  know  what  she's  doing,  you  can  bank  on  it's 
being  all  right,  anyhow,"  Julia  would  say,  laughing, 
but  with  a  flush  of  pride  and  tenderness  all  over  her 
homely  face.  She  might  have  rendered  the  very  same 
report  of  the  other  Stieffel  children  who  came  with,  if 
possible,  increasing  ease  and  regularity  during  the 
next  ten  years  or  more,  and  who  were  reasonably  satis- 
factory as  to  looks  and  disposition ;  but  their  aunt  was 
not  nearly  so  much  interested  in  them.     In  her  own 


THE  NOON-MAKK  29 

phrase,  she  "thought  a  lot"  of  Frank  —  she  would 
make  even  that  evasive  admission  of  affection  shame- 
facedly —  and  so,  of  course,  she  "  thought  a  lot "  of 
all  Frank's  boys  and  girls;  but  Nettie  was  the  first. 
Julia  had  sewed  her  heart  and  all  her  furtive  mater- 
nalism  into  those  delicate  tucks,  those  dear  little  frocks 
and  furbelows ;  for  Frank's  sake  she  had  tried  to  hope 
the  child  would  be  a  boy;  but  the  fact  that  it  was  a 
girl  who  gave  the  assurance,  as  time  advanced,  of  an 
unusual,  striking  and  seductive  beauty  crookedly  com- 
pensated poor  Julia  for  her  own  lack  of  attraction. 
If  she  had  ever  cherished  any  illusions  about  herself, 
they  had  withered  pitifully  long  ago  in  the  sterile  at- 
mosphere of  realities ;  not  even  youth  had  enabled  her 
to  overcome  her  sad  and  grotesque  handicaps ;  no  man 
had  ever  looked  at  her  save  with  that  compassion 
which  is  more  bitter  to  endure  than  the  sight  of  phys- 
ical recoil.  In  little  Nettie,  whose  future  glowed  with 
the  promise  of  innumerable  coquette's  triumphs,  the 
older  woman,  with  a  pathetic  unreason,  saw  her  own 
score  against  Fate  settled  at  last. 

With  all  her  devotion,  however,  she  did  not  spoil  the 
little  girl ;  besides  being  naturally  secretive  where  her 
feelings  were  concerned,  mortally  afraid  of  showing 
any  emotion  except  temper,  Julia  was  a  sensible,  right- 
minded  woman.  She  realized  that  she  could  not  do 
Nettie  a  greater  wrong  than  to  pet  and  humor  her,  or 
treat  her  with  marked  favoritism.  Accordingly  she 
schooled  herself  to  an  impartiality  perhaps  only  pos- 
sible to  conscientious  old  maids;  if  she  took  Nettie  to 
the  photographer,  she  took  Annie  —  the  next  but  one 
—  with  her;  if  she  made  Nettie's  velvet  coat  for  the 
winter,  or  dressed  her  doll,  why,  Frank  junior  got  the 
equivalent  in  a  suit  or  a  pair  of  roller-skates.     The 


30  THE  NOON-MARK 

aunt  never  consciously  softened  her  voice  and  manner 
towards  the  youngster,  never  took  Nettie's  part  unless 
in  strict  justice,  never  spared  her  a  sharp  criticism. 
It  was  only  when  measles  or  whooping-cough  or  other 
plagues  of  childhood  broke  out  amongst  the  Stieffel 
brood  that  Julia's  heroic  self -repression  gave  way;  she 
sat  haggardly  by  Nettie's  crib  all  night,  hung  on  the 
doctor's  words  in  torturing  anxiety,  rushed  out  and 
bought  medicines,  flowers,  delicacies,  toys,  anything 
and  everything  the  small  sufferer  had  a  whim  for, 
with  a  wild  profusion  in  startling  contrast  to  her 
habitually  somewhat  over-strained  frugality.  "  Poor 
Jule,  it  breaks  her  all  up  to  have  the  house  full  of  sick 
kids !  "  Maggie  said  with  indulgence.  "  I  keep  telling 
her  it's  no  more  than  what  all  children  have  got  to 
go  through  with,  and  not  a  bit  serious,  just  a  whole  lot 
of  trouble,  all  of  'em  whining  round,  and  wanting  to 
be  held  all  the  time.  But,  my  goodness,  I  might  as 
well  hold  my  hush.  Minute  one  of  'em  coughs,  Julia 
goes  right  up  in  the  air,  sure  they're  all  going  to  die! 
That's  the  old  maid  of  it,  all  over !  " 

Mrs.  Maggie,  as  she  grew  older,  notwithstanding  the 
steadily  enlarging  family  circle,  never  allowed  its  at- 
tendant responsibilities  to  weigh  on  her;  she  still 
loved  to  talk  and  loved  to  read,  and  still  found  ample 
leisure  for  those  pursuits,  as  in  the  first  days  before 
there  was  any  family  to  mention.  Nothing  like  tak- 
ing it  easy !  But  indeed  the  Stieffel  children  were  an 
exceptionally  healthy,  active  lot,  not  naturally  in  need 
of  much  shepherding ;  and  one  and  all  they  learned  at 
a  very  early  age,  out  of  stark  necessity,  how  to  take 
care  of  themselves  and  to  manage  their  own  affairs, 
Nettie,  in  particular,  displaying  a  notable  precocity 
that  way. 


THE  NOON  MARK  31 

In  mature  years,  she  could  never  place  the  time 
when  it  had  been  forcibly  borne  in  upon  her  that  some- 
body besides  her  mother  must  take  order  for  the  com- 
fort and  well-being  of  the  household;  she  seemed  to 
herself  to  have  come  into  the  world  with  that  knowl- 
edge, and  with  that  care  on  her  mind.     But  let  no 
tender  heart  be   unduly  moved   at   the  thought   of 
childish  shoulders  burdened  so  unchildishly ;  Nettie 
liked  it!     At  five  years  old  she  was  a  capable  nurse 
for  the  younger  babies;  at  seven  she  could  darn  stock- 
ings or  put  on  a  button  with  credit  even  in  competition 
with  a  professional  like  her  Aunt  Julia;  at  ten,  to 
come  home  from  school,  help  get  supper  and  do  all 
the  washing  up  afterwards  was  almost  an  everyday 
occurrence  with  her;  she  had  even  been  known  to 
bake  a  batch  of  bread  Saturday  afternoon  besides 
giving  all  the  other  little  Stieffels  their  weekly  bath 
—  or  making  them   take  it.     Nettie   generally   con- 
trived to  divide  the  domestic  duties  so  that  every  one 
got  a  fair  share  proportioned  to  his  strength  and 
abilities;  she  was  no  Cinderella,  not  she!     She  was 
a  brisk  little  shrew  with  an  unlimited  appetite  for 
both  work  and  authority,  and  no  great  store  of  pa- 
tience with  the  opposite  qualities;  laziness  or  timid- 
ity or  reluctance  irritated  her,  and  instinctively  she 
hated  dirt,  hated  waste,  hated  mismanagement.     In 
many  respects,  people  discovered  in  her  a  strong  like- 
ness to  her  aunt  —  always  setting  apart  looks.     And 
why   Nettie  had   not   "  taken   after "    Julia  in   that 
direction,  too,  Mrs.  Stieffel  used  confidentially  to  won- 
der; she  gave  thanks,  but  still  wondered.     Julia,  she 
would  explain,  had  been  with  her  constantly  before 
the  child's  birth,  which,  of  course,  accounted  for  the 
resemblance  between  their  characters ;  those  pre-natal 


32  THE  NOON-MARK 

influences,  you  know  —  she  had  read  a  great  deal 
about  them  in  the  women's  monthlies  —  all  of  which 
she  took;  the  articles  were  so  helpful. 

By  this  time  there  had  been  some  changes  in  the 
Stieffel  fortunes.  They  no  longer  lived  in  the  Prim- 
rose Flats,  the  home  of  Nettie's  first  recollections. 
When  she  was  about  eight  years  old,  and  just  after 
the  fourth  child  was  born,  Mrs.  Lindtner  died.  She 
had  not  made  a  strong  or  lasting  impression  on  her 
small  granddaughter's  mind,  or  perhaps  on  anybody's 
mind;  and  Nettie,  besides,  was  much  too  busy  for 
mourning  even  if  she  had  been  disposed  to  mourn, 
what  with  the  care  of  the  new  baby  and  the  other  two 
and  the  innumerable  errands  and  odd  jobs  about  the 
house  and  in  connection  with  the  funeral  which  she 
was  incessantly  being  called  upon  to  perform.  The 
youngster  did  it  all  promptly  and  thoroughly. 
Friends  and  neighbors  who  went  in  to  help  com- 
mented to  one  another  on  her  tirelessness,  her  effi- 
ciency; they  agreed  that  she  didn't  seem  to  feel  bad 
like  you'd  think  she  would  about  her  grammaw,  but 
of  course  she  was  too  little  to  re'lize  yet.  Nettie 
wondered  at  their  sniffing  and  sighing  and  hushed 
voices ;  it  may  be  that  her  childish  shrewdness  detect- 
ed something  perfunctory  about  these  demonstrations. 
Mrs.  Frank,  who  was  a  soft-hearted,  affectionate  crea- 
ture, wept  appropriately  and  profusely  until  the  es- 
tate came  to  be  settled  up,  and  it  was  found  that 
her  share  of  the  "  property,"  which  gossip  had  heard 
and  guessed  about,  would  amount  to  as  much  as 
twenty-five  hundred  dollars.  No  sorrow,  no  matter 
how  sincere  —  and  Maggie's  was  sincere  in  its  kind  — 
could  survive  in  its  original  sharpness  so  gratifying  a 
surprise.     Twenty -five  hundred  dollars!     And  there 


THE  NOON-MARK  33 

was  no  inheritance-tax  in  those  days  to  shadow  an 
heirs  happy  anticipations  —  if  an  heir  could  be  happy, 
that  is;  we  all  know,  of  course,  that  they  are  always 
steeped  in  grief,  as  was  Mrs.  Stiefifel,  whenever  she 
stopped  to  think  about  it.  Twenty-five  hundred  dol- 
lars would  enable  them  to  move,  to  get  a  real  house,  a 
home  of  their  own;  and  coming  just  at  this  time  when 
they  were  beginning  to  be  terribly  crowded  in  the  flat, 
and  that  part  of  Fourth  was  running  down  so,  with 
Italians  moving  in  and  a  Greek  shoe-black  next  to  the 
saloon  — !  Any  open-minded  person  will  concede 
that  Maggie  could  not  stop  to  think  of  the  deceased 
very  often  under  the  circumstances. 

Sure  enough,  Frank  Stieffel  (who,  according  to 
gossip  again,  must  have  been  too  held  down  by  the 
heavy  expense  of  such  a  family  to  have  saved  any- 
thing himself)  now  went  bravely  out  and  bargained 
for  one  of  the  houses  that  were  going  up  in  the  new 
subdivision  of  Maplehurst,  the  other  side  of  Adams 
Eoad,  on  the  North  Hill.  "A  restricted  neighbor- 
hood— »  as  the  speculative  gentlemen  who  were  in- 
terested in  this  real-estate  development  advertised  — - 
"  A  restricted  neighborhood,  next  to  the  classiest  resi- 
dential district  on  the  Hill.  NO  ASSESSMENTS. 
All  curbs,  sewers,  etc.,  in  and  paid  for.  Must  be  seen 
to  be  appreciated.  PRICES  RIGHT.  Come  early, 
Mr.  Homeseeker,  if  you  don't  want  to  get  left." 
Frank  went  early  and  was  not  left.  He  was  a  loyal 
and  reliable  employee  of  the  bank,  and  they  made  him 
a  loan  to  cover  the  balance  of  the  right  price,  which 
of  course  was  something  in  excess  of  Mrs.  Lindtner's 
legacy;  you  could  not  expect  to  get  the  restricted 
neighborhood,  the  classy  residential  district,  the  paid 
improvements,  and  all  the  rest  that  had  to  be  seen  to 


34  THE  NOON-MARK 

be  appreciated  for  only  twenty-five  hundred  dollars. 
In  a  little  while  thereafter,  behold  the  Stieffels  estab- 
lished in  their  new  house  with  "  Mission  finish  "  up- 
stairs and  down,  richly  tinted  art-glass  in  the  window 
over  the  sideboard,  a  porch  across  the  front  fully  six 
feet  wide  with  massive  pillars  of  make-believe  stone 
that  gave  an  intriguing  effect  of  being  constructed  out 
of  badly  rumpled  wrapping-paper,  with  a  rubber-plant 
on  the  steps,  with  a  blinding  white  cement  side-walk 
(in  and  paid  for),  with  a  trolley-car  thrashing  by  in 
either  direction  every  half-minute  along  the  street  in 
front,  and  with  a  tract  of  three  or  four  acres  called 
"  the  dumps  "  and  used  as  such  in  the  rear. 

The  place  fulfilled  all  the  promises  made  for  it,  par- 
ticularly in  the  matter  of  neighborhood.  Mr.  Weaver 
the  undertaker  had  the  shingle  bungalow  next  door. 
"  In  your  hour  of  bereavement,  go  to  Weaver  for  sym- 
pathetic care.  Our  prices  are  the  lowest  in  the  city," 
was  on  his  advertisement-cards  in  all  the  street-cars; 
they  were  very  refined  people.  The  lady  on  the  other 
side,  in  the  house  just  like  the  Stieffels1,  was  in  busi- 
ness for  herself  with  a  millinery  store  down  town ;  she 
was  refined  too,  but  naturally  had  not  much  time  for 
society,  going  to  and  from  her  work  every  day  like  a 
man.  Across  the  street  was  a  St.  Louis  flat  or  "  du- 
plex "  as  some  called  them,  where  the  tenants  moved 
in  and  out  pretty  frequently,  no  one  seeming  to  stay 
any  length  of  time;  but  they  were  almost  always  re- 
fined. To  go  on  citing  everybody  up  one  side  of  the 
block  and  back  the  other,  along  the  whole  extent  of 
Rochester  Avenue  would  be  an  achievement  parallel 
to  the  immortal  catalogue  of  the  ships  —  with  some 
differences;  but  enough  has  been  said  to  give  some  idea 
of  the  fairly  staggering  advantages  Maplehurst  as  a 


THE  NOON  MARK  35 

place  of  residence  possessed  over  the  IMmrose  Flats. 
Inside  the  Stieffel  house,  the  contrast  was  not  so 
marked.  There  were  still  the  lop-sided  stacks  of  mag- 
azines and  light-weight  literature  behind  the  doors 
and  on  the  pantry  floor,  and  the  attic  stairs;  babies 
continued  to  arrive  periodically;  and  Frank  came 
home  with  the  delicatessen  bundles  as  of  old.  Leav- 
ing him  out,  the  only  member  of  the  family  who  ever 
did  any  real  work  was  Nettie;  you  might  hear  her 
shrilling  around  the  house,  or  in  pursuit  of  the  young- 
er children  any  day  and  all  day  after  school-hours, 
clattering  the  dish-pan,  swashing  and  swishing  soap- 
suds over  the  floors ;  as  they  advanced  in  wisdom  and 
stature,  she  got  some  measure  of  assistance  out  of  her 
brothers  and  sisters,  too.  She  was  a  general.  Mrs. 
Weaver  and  the  other  refined  neighbors  would  come 
to  their  doors  and  windows  to  witness  her  dickerings 
with  the  vegetable-man,  the  rag-man,  the  casual  ped- 
dler and  solicitor.  They  vowed  that  Stieffel  child 
was  the  cutest  thing;  she'd  talk  right  up  to  anybody! 
Mr.  Weaver,  who  was  a  jolly  soul  out  of  business- 
hours,  used  to  tell  a  story  about  her,  chuckling  with 
infinite  relish  over  the  joke  on  himself. 

"  Say,  d'ye  know  what  she  said  to  me  the  other  day? 
My  wife'll  never  get  over  it !  Why,  it  was  this  way : 
y'know  she's  very  smart  at  figgers,  do  any  kind  of 
sums  in  her  head  quick  as  lightning  —  even  fractions, 
hard  ones  that  would  make  you  'n'  me  study.  Well, 
the  other  day  I  says  to  her  — just  for  fun,  y'know,  t' 
see  what  she'd  do  — '  Nettie,'  's  I,  <  If  a  hen  'n'  a  half 
lays  'n'  egg  'n'  a  half  in  a  day  'n'  a  half,  how  many 
would  that  be  in  a  week  'n'  a  half?  '  I  says.  Kid  an- 
swers up  right  off :  '  Well,  Mr.  Weaver,'  she  says,  <  I 
guess  you  better  get  some  dub  'n'  a  half  to  figger  that 


•) 


36  THE  NOON-MARK 

out  for  you ! '  she  says  quick  as  a  flash.  Got  right 
back  at  me  like  that,  quick  as  a  flash !  "  repeated  Mr. 
Weaver,  in  unfeigned  admiration. 

"  She's  awful  pretty,  too.  That  counts  more  with  a 
girl  than  being  smart,"  his  wife  would  add  with  an 
unconscious  sigh ;  the  undertaking  couple  had  no  chil- 
dren. 

The  gift  of  beauty,  however,  was  one  which  Nettie 
did  not  value  over  much  in  herself  or  anybody  else; 
on  the  other  hand,  she  was  prodigiously  vain  of  being 
smart,  always  at  the  top  of  the  class,  and  bringing 
home  report-cards  whereon  no  grade  fell  below  the 
nineties.  It  was  her  Aunt  Julia  who  revelled  in  her 
good  looks;  the  queue  of  devoted  small  boys  who 
trailed  after  Nettie  with  chewing-gum,  with  all-day- 
suckers,  with  offers  to  carry  her  books,  to  fasten  on  her 
skates,  to  ride  her  on  their  bicycles  filled  Julia  with 
vicarious  delight,  whereas  Nettie  herself  was  frankly 
bored  to  the  uttermost  limits.  To  be  sure,  she  liked  to 
issue  commands  and  see  these  swains  fetch  and  carry ; 
but  any  lugging  in  of  sentimentalities  seemed  to  her 
silly  —  the  very  abyss  of  silliness.  It  never  occurred 
to  her  to  play  off  one  boy  against  another  and  so  get 
more  out  of  each  one  of  them ;  the  youngster  had  not 
the  slightest  instinct  of  coquetry,  and  moreover  she 
was  tactlessly  and  rigidly  honest.  The  only  boy  for 
whom  she  ever  betrayed  any  preference  was  one  Jim 
Marvin,  a  rather  rough,  loud,  swaggering  young  gen- 
tleman some  two  or  three  years  older,  and  not  a  native 
of  Maplehurst;  he  came,  sad  to  say,  from  a  quarter 
much  less  refined,  verging  on  the  slums,  in  fact,  and 
had  the  manners  of  his  degree.  Perhaps  that  was 
what  attracted  Nettie  and  subdued  her;  for  all  her 
independence,  she  was  feminine  enough  to  see  a  cer- 


THE  NOON-MARK  37 

tain  splendor  in  brutality.  They  played  together  on 
almost  equal  terms;  and  once  Jim  led  her  to  felonious 
explorations  in  the  grounds  of  an  old  house  that  stood 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  dumps  and  represented  indeed 
that  classy  residential  district  about  which  we  have 
heard.  The  children  crawled  through  a  hole  in  the 
back  fence,  and  Jim  was  about  to  appropriate  some 
green  apples  from  a  few  old  orchard  trees,  when 
Vested  Rights  appeared  in  the  person  of  another  boy, 
a  boy  who  evidently  belonged  there.  He  was  not  so 
big  as  Jim,  and  did  not  make  any  threatening  demon- 
strations, nevertheless  the  pirate  fled  incontinently, 
leaving  Nettie  to  get  out  of  it  as  best  she  might.  Per- 
sonal courage  is  so  handsome  a  quality  that  one  can- 
not withhold  applause  at  her  exhibition  of  it,  even  in 
these  discreditable  circumstances;  she  retreated  also, 
retreated  expeditiously,  but  in  good  order,  even  turn- 
ing to  make  a  face  at  the  lawful  heir  to  the  apples. 
He  followed  to  the  hole  and  called  after  them,  but 
Jim  was  already  in  headlong  flight  across  the  dumps ; 
Nettie,  who  was  a  fleet  runner,  had  all  she  could  do 
to  keep  up  with  him. 

"Who  lives  in  the  old  house  back  of  here?  The 
one  with  the  big  yard  all  around  it?  "  she  asked  that 
evening  at  supper.  It  was  not  long  after  the  move, 
while  they  felt  still  a  little  strange  to  Maplehurst. 

"  Somebody  named  McQuair,  I  heard,"  her  father 
said. 

"  McQuair?  "  said  Aunt  Julia.  "  Is  it  an  old  lady? 
I  wouldn't  wonder  if  that  was  her  we  made  a  coat 
for;  she  was  one  of  that  regular  North  Hill  crowd. 
Kinda  dressy  old  lady,  Nettie,  with  real  pretty 
crinkly  gray  hair?  Pretty  for  gray  hair,  I  mean. 
Is  that  her?" 


38  THE  NOON-MARK 

"  I  don't  know.  I  ain't  seen  her.  I  was  just  won- 
dering who  lived  there,"  said  Nettie,  prudently  non- 
committal. She  might  have  told  on  herself,  but  never 
on  Jim. 

Her  aunt  Julia  was  living  with  them  now  —  board- 
ing with  them  to  help  out.  Those  were  Julia's  pros- 
perous days,  and  it  may  be  imagined  that  she  did  help 
out  liberally,  not  only  with  board-money  but  with  a 
thousand  other  services;  her  unremitting  industry, 
though  a  daily  spectacle,  stirred  Mrs.  Maggie  to  the 
same  frightened  wonder  as  at  the  outset  of  their  ac- 
quaintance. "  Julia  can  just  do  everything ! "  she 
was  still  telling  their  world  when  it  became  calam- 
itously apparent  that  Julia  could  not  do  everything. 

Her  troubles  dated  from  the  day  she  left  Fritsch  to 
carry  out  a  cherished  ambition  by  setting  up  for  her- 
self. Prospects  were  brilliant  at  first;  three  of 
Fritsch's  best  girls  went  with  her;  numbers  of  his 
patrons  promised  their  custom;  her  credit  was  good 
at  all  the  shops ;  she  had  three  rooms  nicely  fitted  up, 
a  stock  of  materials  in  the  best  taste,  all  the  latest 
modes  and  ideas  —  then  what  on  earth  was  the  mat- 
ter? Nobody  knows.  It  was  as  if  written  on  the 
scrolls  of  Fate  that  Julia  Stieffel  was  not  to  succeed. 
She  was  a  steam-engine  for  work  herself,  but  alas, 
she  could  not  impart  the  steam-engine  disposition  to 
her  underlings;  one  by  one  they  drifted  off  to  be 
replaced  by  others  of  varying  degrees  of  incompetence 
who  likewise  were  forever  drifting  off.  It  was  a  pro- 
cession. The  customers  came  and  went  after  much 
the  same  fashion;  some  were  satisfied,  some  dissatis- 
fied ;  they  rang  the  changes  on  prompt  pay,  slow  pay, 
no  pay  at  all.  Poor  Julia,  who  always  knew  her  own 
mind,  could  not  cope  with  their  caprices ;  their  negli- 


THE  NOON-MARK  39 

gence  smacked  to  her  of  dishonesty,  yet  their  actual 
dishonesty  she  could  not  believe,  though  imposed  on 
time    and    time    again.     The    experience    bewildered 
without  teaching  her;  she  could  not  make  out  why 
it  was   that    everything   went   wrong.     Fritsch   had 
never  seemed  to  have  so  much  trouble ;  one  would  have 
thought  his  shop  ran  itself;  of  course  some  of  the  girls 
left  now  and  then,  and  there  were  always  new  ones 
being  broken  in ;  and  she  remembered  costly  mishaps, 
costumes    returned,    difficult    ladies,    hopeless    bills. 
But  Fritsch  kept  his  head  triumphantly  above  water, 
and  here  she  was  sinking,  sinking.     The  whole  un- 
lucky adventure  was  over  inside  of  eighteen  months ; 
Julia  went  on  the  rocks  with  all  her  savings ;  she  did 
not  salvage  even  a  single  sewing-machine.     All  was 
lost  except  the  un-lose-able,  her  superlative  skill  and 
knowledge  of  her  trade.     But  lo,  good  forewomen  and 
skirt-makers,  the  very  people  whom  Julia  never  could 
find  to  work  for  her,  were  now  as  thick  as  hops! 
Fritsch   had  one,   everybody  had   one;   she   trudged 
from  one  modiste  to  another  until  she  was  weary; 
and  at  last  had  to  fall  back  on  seamstressing  at  two 
dollars  a  day  —  a  dismal  come-down,  but  half  a  loaf 
is  better  than  no  bread. 

Even  this  catastrophe  could  not  shake  Maggie's 
faith  in  her.  "  Poor  Julia  did  have  the  worst  luck !  " 
was  the  burden  of  her  comment.  "  You  wouldn't  be- 
lieve how  mean  some  people  are  —  real  dishonorable, 
/  call  it.  How  was  she  to  know  they  wouldn't  pay 
her?  They  all  looked  like  they  had  plenty  of  money; 
I  suppose  that's  how  they  happen  to  have  it  — just 
never  paying  anybody.  And  then  some  of  the  stores 
were  so  mean,  too.  If  she'd  been  a  man,  they  wouldn't 
have  dared  treat  her  so;  but  they  all  pick  on  any 


40  THE  NOON-MARK 

woman  that's  out  for  herself,  you  know  because  they 
know  they  can.  I  was  reading  a  piece  about  that  very 
thing  in  Hearts  and  Homes,  the  last  number.  '  The 
Tyranny  of  Sex/  it  was  called.  If  I  can  find  it,  I'll 
send  one  of  the  children  over  with  it,  Mis'  Duncan. 
You'd  be  interested." 

"  Of  course  Mis'  Duncan  don't  know  a  thing  about 
it  —  I  don't  think !  And  her  in  the  hat  trade  all  her 
life ! ':  Julia  would  add,  grumpily  sarcastic.  But  in 
her  heart  of  hearts,  the  other's  dog-like  championship 
warmed  and  strengthened  her.  Julia  knew  —  she 
could  not  help  knowing  —  that  her  brother's  wife  had 
the  intelligence  of  a  hen,  and  a  character  which,  for 
such  qualities  as  determination,  industry  and  perse- 
verance, was  not  even  to  be  compared  to  a  hen's ;  but 
Maggie  believed  in  her.  And  who  is  there  so  strong, 
that  he  does  not  crave  somebody's  belief,  be  it  only  a 
weakling's? 

The  Stieffels,  on  the  whole,  got  along  pretty  well. 
Frank's  salary  was  not  more  than  enough  but  they 
lived  on  it ;  the  children  were  healthy  and  good ;  Julia 
was  not  the  sort  of  boarder  to  add  to  their  expenses 
—  if,  in  fact,  she  did  not  actually  lessen  them ;  she  was 
seldom  out  of  work  and  never  idle  even  in  her  slack 
time,  sewing  for  the  family,  taking  a  hand  at  the 
range  or  the  ironing-table.  It  was  a  happy  house- 
hold and  so  large  that  the  addition  of  another  member, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Aymar  child,  made  no  apprecia- 
ble difference.  Frank  was  really  responsible  for  that, 
though  he  used  to  say  that  his  wife  worried  about  her 
cousin's  little  girl,  an  orphan,  alone  in  the  world ;  the 
truth  was  that  he  himself  worried.  Maggie  Stieffel 
never  worried  about  her  own  children,  let  alone  other 
peoples' !     "  It   don't   seem    right.     Just    think   how 


THE  NOON-MARK  41 

Mattie  would  feel,  if  she  knew  —  and  maybe  she  does 
know,"  he  said,  his  good,  tired,  patient  face  screwed 
into  new  wrinkles  of  care  and  anxiety.  "And  here 
we've  got  a  home,  and  plenty  of  room.  Seems  as 
if  we  could  stick  her  in  somewhere  — " 

It  ended  by  his  making  the  California  journey  to 
get  her,  Maggie  acquiescing  readily  enough.  There 
was  something  eminently  gracious,  romantic  and  be- 
coming about  their  rescuing  pose ;  she  bragged  a  little, 
harmlessly.  "  Oh,  no,  we  don't  have  to,  we  just  feel 
that  we'd  like  to.  No,  she  isn't  hardly  a  relation ;  her 
mother  was  a  cousin  of  mine,  that's  as  near  as  it  comes. 
But  you  know  what  kind  of  a  place  the  world  is  for  a 
girl  alone,  with  snares  and  all  kinds  of  men  —  you 
know  what  men  are !  "  said  Mrs.  Frank  in  tones  of 
dark  significance.  And  it  gave  her  an  agreeable  sen- 
sation of  opulence  to  note  the  impression  made  by  the 
statement  that  Mr.  Stieffel  had  simply  made  up  his 
mind  to  let  business  go  for  a  few  weeks  while  he  went 
out  to  the  Coast  to  get  the  child  —  he  thought  that 
was  the  higher  duty,  Maggie  said,  borrowing  from 
Hearts  and  Homes  again. 


II 

THE  old  McQuair  homestead  was  situated  at 
the  top  of  the  rise  to  the  north  of  Adams 
Road,  overlooking  the  suburb  of  Maplehurst. 
With  us,  any  house  which  has  harbored  the  same  fam- 
ily for  as  much  as  a  quarter  of  a  century  automati- 
cally becomes  an  old  homestead  with  all  that  phrase 
implies  of  stability  and  sentimental  tradition;  but 
custom  apart,  this  one  had  a  fair  claim  to  its  title, 
having  been  built  as  far  back  as  eighteen-thirty  by 
the  great-grandfather  of  the  present  generation,  and 
lived  in  by  some  one  of  the  name  ever  since.     In  Judge 
Alexander  McQuair's  day,   the  North  Hill  was  all 
farms  and  maple  woods,  traversed  only  by  the  road  to 
Adamstown,  an  older  settlement  than  the  city  itself; 
the  judge  considered  himself  to  be  establishing  a  home 
in  the  country,  and  wrote  elegantly  about  his  orchards 
and    bee-hives    in     Latin    verse    modeled     on    the 
"  Eclogues,"  which  had  been  hammered  into  him  in 
youth  at  the  Scotch  University  where  he  was  edu- 
cated ;  he  was  a  Scot  by  birth,  but  came  to  this  country 
while  yet  a  young  man.     Nowadays  that  whole  North 
Hill  locality  is  built  up  all  the  way  to  Adamstown 
with  suburban  residences  which  ere  long  will  be  old 
homesteads,  too ;  the  cow-pastures  and  leafy  lanes  that 
Alexander  knew  are  no  longer  within  the  memory  of 
even  the  oldest  inhabitant,  and  the  very  trees  from 
which  Maplehurst  took  its  name  have  all  but  disap- 
peared.    They  began  to  die  off,  such  as  were  not  cut 

42 


THE  NOON-MARK  43 

clown  outright  to  make  way  for  sewers  and  sidewalks, 
soon  after  the  subdivision  was  opened ;  so  that  by  the 
time  Master  Randon  McQuair,  at  the  age  of  eight  or 
thereabouts,  came  to  live  in  his  ancestral  domain 
there  were  only  three  or  four  well-preserved  and  vig- 
orous specimens  left,  all  of  them  on  the  lawn  in 
front  of  the  old  house. 

The  little  boy  was  much  interested  by  these  fine, 
tall,  upstanding  trees,  the  like  of  which  he  could  not 
remember  to  have  seen  before,  although  trees  in  plenty 
as  well  as  other  vegetable  forms  of  many  outlandish 
kinds  had  entered  iuto  his  experience.  Canadian 
pines,  palms  in  Cuba,  cactus  and  maguey,  the  limes, 
plane-trees  and  poplars  of  European  cities  had  in  their 
turns  been  familiar  to  Ranny,  though  he  could  scarcely 
have  assigned  them  severally  to  their  proper  zones; 
they  all  throve  together  in  the  jungle  of  his  memories. 
As  for  homesteads,  old  or  new,  Randon's  mental  land- 
scape had  never  been  claimed  or  staked  out,  so  to 
speak;  for  more  than  a  few  months  or  perhaps  weeks  at 
a  time ;  he  had  lived  in  a  log  cabin  on  Cripple  Creek ;  he 
had  lived  in  a  great  old  stone  mausoleum  with  a  patio 
and  fountain  at  the  corner  of  the  Avenida  Porfirio 
Diaz;  he  had  lived  in  an  Adirondack  bungalow;  he 
had  lived  everywhere  except  in  this  square  brick 
house  with  the  maples  shadowing  the  lawn,  and  the 
gravel  drive  winding  up  through  the  old  shrubbery, 
and  the  octagonal  lattice  kiosk  over  the  ancient  dis- 
used well  and  pump.  He  sat  very  upright  in  the 
carriage,  craning  and  peering  in  every  direction  until 
his  eyes  ached,  and  also  sniffing  with  his  small  nose 
unaccustomed  odors.  It  was  the  afternoon  of  a  sum- 
mer day,  and  the  grass  had  been  lately  cut,  and  gave 
forth  a  pleasant  fragrance  conquering  the  city  dust 


44  THE  NOON-MARK 

and  coal-smoke.  The  trolley-cars  went  grinding  along 
Adams  Road  at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  at  every  opening 
amongst  the  bushes  the  uniform  roofs  of  Maplehurst 
could  be  seen  threateningly  near,  yet  here  within  the 
confines  of  an  ordinary  city  lot  there  was  to  be  felt 
a  kind  of  determined  privacy;  the  place  sat  civilly 
aloof  like  a  gentlewoman  who  should  find  herself  by 
some  untoward  chance  shut  in  with  a  mob  of  lackeys. 
Randon  had  somehow  understood  quite  clearly, 
though  nobody  had  explained  it  to  him  in  so  many 
words,  that  this  was  the  end  of  the  journey.  About 
all  the  other  stops  he  had  been  conscious  of  a  tran- 
sient or  temporary  feeling,  though,  for  aught  he  had 
been  told  to  the  contrary,  any  one  of  them  might  have 
been  the  "  home  "  which  he  once  or  twice  overheard 
his  father  speak  of  as  their  destination.  The  word 
did  not  mean  much  to  this  small  Ulysses.  He  knew 
that  they  were  going  to  meet  a  lady  who  lived  there, 
but  who  she  was  did  not  greatly  interest  him.  In 
Ranny's  eight-year-old  universe,  grown  people  were 
only  of  importance  as  being  the  governing  body ;  they 
were  all,  without  distinction,  immeasurably  old,  and 
looked  as  like  as  peas,  except  for  individual  idiosyn- 
crasies about  skirts  and  trousers.  He  had  been  pre- 
sented to  numbers  of  them  recently  with  the  meaning- 
less information  that  this  was  his  Aunt  Margaret,  his 
Cousin  Dorothy,  his  other  cousin  little  Dorothy,  his 
big  Cousin  John.  They  all  did  the  same  things,  i.  e. 
the  skirted  cousins  kissed  him  —  horror !  —  and 
sighed  and  made  one  or  two  remarks,  either  how  much 
he  looked  like  poor  Louise,  or  that  he  was  McQuair 
all  over ;  the  trousers  shook  his  hand  decently  enough, 
and  said,  was  this  Randon?  After  which  ceremonies 
it  was  generally  suggested  that  he  go  and  look  at  the 


THE  NOON-MARK  45 

garden  or  the  goldfish  or  what-not  and  somebody  was 
told  off  to  accompany  him,  another  child  if  there 
happened  to  be  one  in  the  household,  if  not,  some 
skirted  or  trousered  grown-up  whom  Randy  instinc- 
tively divined  to  be  more  or  less  bored  by  the  duty. 
He  was  a  rather  silent  little  chap,  and  in  these  last 
circumstances  would  become  more  silent  than  ever, 
obeying  carefully  and  trying  to  find  out  what  was 
expected  of  him  in  the  way  of  behavior,  with  some 
vague  idea  of  being  as  little  trouble  as  possible. 
Everybody  seemed  to  live  in  large,  cushion-y  houses; 
there  were  endless  bells,  and  a  correspondingly  endless 
number  of  stiff,  starched,  quiet  women  to  answer  them 
—  women  who  carried  trays,  and  said  "  Madame  " 
to  the  cousins  with  skirts  and  to  himself  "  Master 
Randon  " ;  on  his  father's  orders,  he  used  to  give  sums 
of  money  to  them  in  a  private  and  underhand  man- 
ner. In  some  of  the  houses  there  were  also  large, 
shaven  personages  who  wore  black  clothes  and  white 
shirts  such  as  his  father  put  on  in  the  evening;  but 
they  had  theirs  on  all  day  long,  and  they  waited  on 
table;  one  called  them  John  or  James  but  the  last 
name  was  invariably  Butler.  Everywhere  there 
would  be  some  grown-up  who  would  call  Randy  to 
the  front  before  the  rest  and  ask  him  what  he  meant 
to  do  when  he  got  to  be  a  man?  Was  he  going  to  be 
an  engineer  and  build  bridges  and  railroads  like  papa? 
Ranny  who  was  honest  and  not  particularly  quick- 
witted, never  could  think  of  an  answer  wherewith  to 
appease  this  well-intentioned  curiosity;  he  would  not 
say  that  he  wanted  to  be  an  engineer  like  papa  because 
it  would  not  have  been  the  truth,  and  on  the  other 
hand  he  shrank  from  divulging  his  ambitions  in  the 
pirate    line    because    another   of   his    sure   instincts 


46  THE  NOON-MARK 

warned  him  that  his  elders  would  laugh.  He  could 
only  wriggle  or  stand  sheepishly  dumb  under  the  in- 
quiry ;  and  presently  they  would  forget  all  about  him, 
and  he  would  be  allowed  to  slink  away  unmolested. 

The  carriage  halted.  "  Here  we  are ! ,:  said  his 
father;  and  he  got  down  and  lifted  Randon  over  the 
wheel,  and  turned  to  pay  the  driver.  It  was  a  livery 
vehicle;  the  coach-house  and  stables  to  be  seen 
aligned  in  the  offing,  though  part  of  the  original 
equipment  of  the  old  McQuair  homestead,  had  long 
been  unoccupied.  A  lady  came  to  the  door  —  the 
lady,  as  Randon  felt  assured  the  instant  he  saw  her. 
The  boy  took  off  his  hat  in  a  sedate  and  decorous  little 
manner  he  had  which  some  of  the  grown-ups  had  ap- 
peared to  find  highly  diverting;  this  one  smiled,  too, 
but  conventionally  as  if  he  were  as  grown-up  as  her- 
self, and  said  "  How  do  you  do?  "  holding  out  her 
hand.  They  shook  hands,  eyeing  each  other  over 
frankly. 

The  lady,  as  Randon  came  to  know  a  good  while 
later  when  both  of  them  looked  back  to  this  first  meet- 
ing with  amusement,  was  at  this  time  fifty-five  or 
so  —  that  is,  about  fifteen  years  older  than  his  own 
father;  but  she  might  have  been  a  hundred  and  fifty- 
five  for  all  the  distinction  Randy  made.  They  were 
all  Methuselahs  to  him.  She  had  thick  gray  hair, 
not  very  many  wrinkles,  dark  eyes,  a  small,  trim, 
sprightly  figure.  At  the  sound  of  her  voice  his  father 
turned;  and  she  exchanged  with  him  the  same  greet- 
ing in  the  same  style  of  cool  and  civil  friendliness. 
It  touched  the  pinnacle  of  good  taste  in  the  opinion 
of  the  youngest  actor  in  the  scene,  though  he  would 
scarcely  have  expressed  his  approbation  in  that  flight 
of  metaphor  —  no  kissing,  no  embarrassing  sentimen- 


THE  NOON-MARK  47 

tal  observances  whatsoever.  In  after  years,  Randon 
used  to  aver  that  he  began  to  like  Mrs.  Hector  Mc- 
Quair  from  that  moment. 

He  found  out  almost  immediately  that  she  was  Mrs. 
Hector  "McQuair,  though  he  made  no  effort  that  way, 
being  perfectly  content  to  take  her  for  granted,  with 
a  name  or  without  one,  as  children  take  their  elders. 
The  hackman  drove  off,  and  they  took  their  valises 
and  followed  her  into  the  dim,  high-ceilinged  old  hall ; 
and  it  was  then  that  the  lady  herself  said,  looking 
quickly  at  his  father :  "  Does  Randon  know  who  I 
am?     Have  you  ever  told  him?'1 

"  Why,  no.  It  didn't  seem  necessary.  He's  not 
old  enough  yet  to  understand.  After  a  while,  of 
course  —  " 

"  Oh,  I  think  we'd  better  start  straight  and  all  open 
and  above-board,  hadn't  we?"  she  said  with  an  anx- 
iety which  she  herself  seemed  to  find  a  little  funny. 
"  Even  if  he  doesn't  understand  —  "  And  bending 
down  'to  him  and  speaking  very  carefully  and  dis- 
tinctly, she  said :  "lam  Mrs.  Hector  McQuair,  Ran- 
dom You  know  who  your  grandfather  was?  Hector 
McQuair?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  the  boy  soberly  attentive. 

"Well,  I'm  his  wife  —  his  widow.  I'm  not  your 
grandmother,  though,  because  I'm  not  Papa's  mother 
—  I'm  just  his  step-mother.  That's  not  the  same 
thing,  you  know.     It's  —  er  —  it's  —  " 

"  I  thought  you'd  have  some  trouble  explaining," 
said  McQuair  senior  not  without  amusement,  as  she 
hesitated,  trying  to  choose  the  right  words.  "  Might 
as  well  give  it  up.  You  don't  understand,  do  you 
Randy?" 

"  No,"  said  Randon  honestly;  "  but  it's  all  right!  " 


48  THE  NOON-MARK 

he  added,  being  of  a  generous  disposition  and  anxious 
to  oblige  her  —  at  which  kind  assurance  both  the 
older  people  began  to  laugh. 

"  I  suppose  he'd  better  call  me  i  Mrs.  McQuair  '?  " 
said  the  lady  questioningly  again. 

"Well,  that's  rather  a  mouthful  —  might  sound 
queer  to  outsiders  —  I  thought  of  '  Aunt  Virginia' 
— ?  "  said  the  other,  hesitating  now  in  his  turn. 

She  repeated  "  Aunt  Virginia  "  drawing  her  brows 
slightly.  "  But  that  would  make  the  relationship 
harder  to  explain  than  ever  when  he  is  old  enough 
to  understand.  No,  let  it  be  '  Mrs.  McQuair.'  Then 
when  he  grows  up  he  won't  find  himself  on  an  awk- 
ward footing  of  intimacy,  supposing  he  —  well,  sup- 
posing he  doesn't  particularly  care  about  being  inti- 
mate. Oh,  such  things  have  happened,  you  know, 
Aleck,"  she  said,  as  her  stepson  made  a  movement 
of  dissent. 

Randon's  father  said  something  with  a  kind  of 
embarrassed  vehemence  about  their  "  getting  along 
together  all  right."  "  You'll  find  him  a  pretty  good 
sort  of  a  boy  as  boys  go.  I  don't  believe  he'll  give 
you  much  trouble,"  he  said  anxiously.  "  And  he's 
sure  to  like  you.  You'll  get  along  with  him  all  right. 
You  always  do  with  everybody." 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  a  thing  in  the  world  about 
small  boys  —  however,  we're  probably  even  there. 
He  doesn't  know  a  thing  in  the  world  about  old 
ladies !  "  said  Mrs.  McQuair  again  with  that  vanishing 
air  of  having  a  private  laugh  at  her  own  expense. 
"  Dear  me,  how  much  the  poor  child  has  to  learn  !  " 

In  fact,  Master  Randon  did  forthwith  begin  to  ac- 
quire information  at  a  great  rate  of  a  kind  which 
hitherto  no  one  had  thought  it  worth  while  or  perhaps 


THE  NOON-MARK  49 

found  it  possible  to  impart  to  him.  As  that  this  was 
his  home  because  it  had  been  his  father's  and  his 
grandfather's  and  his  great-grandfather's  before  him; 
he  was  to  live  there  with  Mrs.  McQuair,  and  go  to 
school  and  grow  up.  No  more  come-by-chance  roosts 
for  a  while  here,  a  while  there,  then  up  stakes  and 
away  again;  Papa  would  still  pursue  those  courses, 
but  he,  Randon,  would  be  stationary.  He  would  have 
his  own  money,  and  he  must  learn  how  to  take  care  of 
it,  and  how  to  go  and  get  it  at  the  bank  where  it  would 
be  kept.  There  was  a  room  which  would  always  be 
his,  a  place  at  the  table  where  he  would  always  sit. 
Though  all  this  indicated  a  way  of  life  radically  dif- 
ferent from  that  he  had  lived  so  far,  which  grievous  to 
relate,  had  been  pretty  haphazard  as  regarded  beds, 
meals,  lessons  and  many  other  items,  Randy  ac- 
cepted the  prospect  phlegmatically.  His  experience 
had  been  too  wide  and  varied  for  any  change  to  affect 
him  much. 

It  was  a  big  house,  like  the  others  he  had  seen, 
with  not  quite  so  many  ornamental  breakables  about, 
however,  so  that  one  might  go  free  and  fearlessly; 
indeed,  the  furnishings  were  in  so  massive  a  style  that 
a  small  boy,  even  had  be  been  much  more  viciously  in- 
clined than  Randy,  could  scarcely  have  prevailed 
against  them  —  majestic  four-post  beds,  great  cavern- 
ous wardrobes,  sofas  of  immovably  weighty  appear- 
ance with  griffins  and  horns-of-plenty  carved  all  over 
them,  whole  herds  of  straight-backed  mahogany  side- 
chairs  headed  by  a  bell-wether  of  an  arm-chair. 
Nothing  had  been  changed  since  Judge  McQuair's 
day;  there  was  a  ghastly  marble  bust  of  the  old  gentle- 
man in  his  stock  and  ruffles  mounted  on  a  pedestal  in 
one  comer  of  the  front  parlor.     Randon  was  duly  in- 


50  THE  NOON-MARK 

trodnced  to  it,  as  also  to  the  oil -portrait  of  Mrs. 
Alexander  simpering  near  by  in  a  circular  gilt  frame, 
with  a  turban  and  bird-of-paradise  plume  on  her  head. 
"  He  can't  make  much  out  of  them  now,  but  as  he  goes 
along,  he'll  be  more  interested,"  the  lady  said.  "  I'll 
talk  to  him  about  them." 

His  father  nodded.  "  Yes,  that's  what  I  want.  I 
want  him  to  grow  up  with  his  people,  and  to  have  a 
tradition  —  something  to  hark  back  to,  you  know." 

Upstairs  Mrs.  McQuair  threw  open  a  door  at  the 
end  of  the  hall,  and  showed  Randon  that  room  that 
was  to  be  his;  it  was  only  a  little  room,  with  one 
window  giving  on  a  cramped  iron  balcony  over  the 
front  door,  a  clematis  vine  twining  in  and  out  of  the 
rusted  iron  railings  which  were  none  too  secure,  hav- 
ing been  there  since  Judge  Alexander,  too.  In  the 
room  there  was  fresh  white  matting  on  the  floor,  but 
the  high  chest  of  drawers  and  the  bedstead  with  head 
and  foot  pieces  made  up  of  countless  slender  spindles, 
and  the  wooden  chair  painted  black  with  gilt  stencil- 
lings and  the  wall-paper  figured  with  little  symmetri- 
cal blue  and  cherry-colored  roses  and  green  leaves  and 
branches  and  crested  birds  —  all  these  must  have 
been  there  aforetime,  Randon  argued,  from  his 
father's  exclamation  of  recognition  as  he  stepped 
within. 

"  Hello!  "  he  said,  "  why,  it's  just  the  same!  "  He 
gazed  all  about  eagerly,  surprised  and  touched  and 
pleased,  then  turned  on  Mrs.  Hector  a  look  in  which 
some  older  and  more  discerning  witness  than  Randy 
might  have  read  appreciation  and  a  certain  admira- 
tion and  warm  regard.     "  It  was  like  you  to  do  this." 

"  I  thought  you  might  like  him  to  have  it.  And 
I've  never  changed  anything  in  the  house,  you  know, 


THE  NOON-MARK  51 

anyhow,"  she  said  simply.  "  This  was  Papa's  room 
when  he  was  at  home  —  when  he  was  a  little  boy 
like  you,  Randy,"  she  told  the  open-eyed  youngster. 

"  There're  exactly  two  hundred  and  sixty-nine  birds 
on  the  north  wall  opposite  the  bed.  I've  counted  'em 
many  a  time,"  said  Randon's  father.  "  And  here's 
the  same  old  brass  candlestick  on  the  table.  Look, 
Ranny,  you  pushed  the  candle  up  with  this  thumb- 
piece,  as  fast  as  it  melted  —  only  you  didn't!  Be- 
cause the  wax  always  ran  down  and  stuck  the  thumb- 
piece  tight  in  the  slot.  I  drew  a  skull  and  cross- 
bones  and  my  initials  with  red  ink  in  the  bottom  of 
the  table-drawer  —  and  by  George,  here  they  are 
still ! " 

"  Thev  wouldn't  come  out  with  the  hardest  kind  of 
scrubbing,"  Mrs.  McQuair  said.  They  went  on  talk- 
ing while  Randon  cruised  around  the  room,  examin- 
ing everything,  but  at  a  safe  distance,  respectfully. 
Had  he  been  a  little  girl,  a  pleasurable  sense  of  owner- 
ship might  have  developed  within  him;  but  the  male 
animal  seems  to  be  naturally  foot-loose,  in  youth  at 
any  rate.  After  a  while,  Mrs.  McQuair  who  possessed 
some  faculty  for  seeing  without  the  least  appearance 
of  watching,  asked  him  kindly  if  he  liked  it? 

"  It's  very  nice,"  said  Randon,  politely.  "  I  don't 
know  much  about  rooms  like  this.  Who  is  the  pic- 
ture of  the  lady  of?  " 

He  had  discovered  it  in  a  small  easel  of  silvered 
metal  on  top  of  a  frame  of  book-shelves  across  one 
corner  of  the  room  —  a  photograph  of  somebody  in 
a  light  dress  with  a  wreath  of  flowers  and  a  veil  on 
her  head.  The  others  looked  from  him  to  the  pic- 
ture and  then  at  each  other  for  a  silent  moment. 

"  I  put  it  there  for  him  on  purpose,   of  course. 


52  THE  NOON-MARK 

There  didn't  happen  to  be  any  good  one  of  you  — 
just  one  or  two  taken  when  you  were  at  college,  and 
he  wouldn't  have  known  they  were  you,"  said  the  lady 
finally.     "  But  doesn't  he  remember  her?  " 

The  father  shook  his  head.  "  Not  any  more,  I'm 
afraid.  Two  yefcrs,  you  know.  That's  a  long  time 
in  a  child's  life,"  he  said  with  a  brief  sigh.  "It's 
Mother,  Ranny.     You  remember  Mother?" 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  the  boy  confidently.  "  I  remember 
her.  She's  dead.  She  used  to  be  on  the  bed  all  the 
time,  and  Conchita  fanned  her;  and  then  she  died 
one  day.  She  didn't  look  like  that  picture,  though. 
Is  that  her?  " 

Neither  of  them  answered  for  an  instant,  and  some- 
thing about  the  silence  or  in  their  faces  troubled  and 
puzzled  him.  "Say  she,  Randy  — say:  '  Is  that 
she?'  — not  her/'  Mrs.  McQuair  said  at  last  in  a 
mechanical  voice  and  utterance,  and  Ranclon  obedi- 
ently repeated  "she,"  supposing  that  error  in  his 
speech  to  have  shocked  them. 

"  We  were  in  Gaudalajara  when  it  happened  —  you 
knew  that,  though.  Conchita  must  have  been  some 
maid  we  had.  I  never  know  their  names,  but  Randy 
has  had  more  to  do  with  them,  of  course,"  Aleck  Mc- 
Quair said,  with  another  sigh. 

After  this  Randon  rather  expected  the  invitation  to 
go  out  and.  see  the  garden  which,  sure  enough,  was 
presently  issued.  But  this  time  nobody  went  along  to 
guide  him ;  instead  Mrs.  McQuair  took  him  to  the  back 
of  the  house  into  a  cross-hall  with  oil-coth  on  the 
floor,  and  an  umbrella-stand  holding  in  place  of  um- 
brellas a  spade  and  a  short-handled  rake,  the  latter 
with  an  old  battered  straw  hat  and  a  pair  of  old 
soiled  cotton  gloves  draped  upon  its  tines.     There  was 


THE  NOON-MARK  53 

a  door  with  the  upper  panels  filled  with  glass;  it  was 
cool  and  dark  as  a  well  in  this  passage-way,  but  with 
the  opening  of  the  door  there  came  a  gush  of  afternoon 
sunshine,  warm  outside  air,  and  the  weedy,  dusty, 
spicy  odors  he  had  smelled  before.  By  a  stone  step  or 
two  one  descended  to  a  venerable  brick  walk,  uneven, 
with  a  green  rime  of  mold  here  and  there,  and  weeds 
sprouting  in  the  cracks ;  a  great  weigelia  bush  shaded 
the  corner  with  high-arching  branches  that  in  the 
spring  would  be  wands  of  delicately  brilliant  bloom, 
and  other  shrubs  forming  an  irregular  hedge  followed 
the  path  round  a  curve  and  out  of  sight.  The  oppos- 
ing side  of  it  was  guarded  by  a  tall  board  fence. 

"  You'll  have  to  find  your  way  around  by  yourself," 
said  Mrs.  McQuair.  "  But  you  can't  very  easily  get 
lost.  That's  the  outside  fence.  You  don't  mind  my 
not  going  with  you?  "  she  asked  in  her  agreeable  man- 
ner exactly  as  if  he  had  been  her  own  age,  or  at  least 
as  fully  grown  up  —  nothing  patronizing,  nothing  su- 
perior, nothing  domineering  about  it.  Randon 
hastened  to  assure  her  warmly  that  that  was  all  right, 
he  didn't  want  her  at  all ! 

In  truth  he  very  much  liked  being  allowed  thus  to 
take  care  of  himself  and  ramble  at  will.  The  walk  led 
him  to  a  potato-patch  with  outlying  beds  of  tomatoes, 
tent-like  erections  for  climbing  beans,  half  a  dozen 
rows  of  sugar-corn,  and  so  on  —  the  kitchen-garden, 
in  short,  framed  with  currant  and  raspberry  bushes. 
Farther  on  the  bricks  spread  into  a  tiny  paved 
esplanade  with  a  bench  shadowed  by  an  arbor  of 
grape-vines ;  beyond  it  the  shrubs  were  succeeded  by  a 
file  of  aged  apple-trees  set  regularly  in  smooth  grass. 
Randy  who  had  been  playing  that  he  was  an  Indian 
scout,  emerging  from  cover,  halted  abruptly,  not  that 


54  THE  NOON-MARK 

a  scoutish  sixth  sense  had  warned  him,  but  because 
with  no  more  than  the  five  senses  of  ordinary  mortals 
he  was  aware  of  the  neighborhood  of  others,  friends 
or  enemies,  to  wit :  a  little  girl  and  a  bigger  boy  whom 
he  both  saw  and  heard  scurrying  off  to  a  hole  in  the 
fence  where  one  of  the  boards  had  fallen  out,  at  top 
speed.  They  reached  it,  tumbled  through,  vanished, 
leaving  an  impression  of  scratched  bare  legs,  apple- 
cores,  unkempt  hair,  semi-rowdyism.  Randon,  how- 
ever, was  not  squeamish;  to  him,  even  if  interlopers 
poaching  on  the  orchard,  they  were  still  other 
children,  creatures  of  his  own  age  and  world.  He 
uttered  an  amicable  "  Hi!  Say — !  "  and  ran  to  the 
opening  and  stuck  his  head  through,  but  only  just  in 
time  to  behold  them  escaping,  pell-mell,  with  squeals 
and  giggles.  The  little  girl  turned  around  at  the  cor- 
ner and  made  a  most  spirited  face  at  him,  her  tongue 
out  and  black  eyes  snapping.  Randy  stared  after  her 
and  up  and  down.  It  was  an  alley,  unpaved,  littered 
with  tin  cans,  noisome  rags  and  broken  crockery ;  ven- 
turing cautiously  a  little  way  down  it  in  the  wake  of 
the  banditti,  he  discovered  that  it  ended  in  a  field  and 
hollow  which  provided  dumping-ground  for  a  still 
larger  and  more  varied  assortment  of  rubbish.  Paths 
crossed  it  in  two  or  three  directions,  and  on  the 
farther  side  there  were  the  backyards  and  rear  eleva- 
tions of  a  row  of  small  houses  facing  a  made  street. 
The  place  engaged  one's  interest,  but  Randon  decided 
that  for  the  present  at  least  it  had  better  be  let  alone ; 
it  seemed  somehow  to  the- youngster  that  he  had  made 
a  wordless  pact  with  Mrs.  McQuair  to  stay  within 
bounds. 

That  night  they  had  dinner  in  a  high,  wide,  dim 
room  with  candles  on  the  table,  and  courses  in  the 


THE  NOON-MARK  55 

prescribed  sequence,  just  as  in  the  other  big  houses. 
Randoms  father  came  down  in  the  black  clothes  about 
which  he  always  made  jokes,  saying  that  they  wrere 
ten  years  out  of  date  and  that  he  looked  like  Brer 
Tambourine  or  Mistah  Bones  —  personages  whom 
Randy  was  quite  sure  he  had  never  met  in  all  his 
sojournings,  though  he  kept  a  look-out  for  them 
wherever  black  coats  were  assembled.  He  himself 
had  to  put  on  his  little  best  suit,  one  of  the  maids 
good-naturedly  helping  with  the  cuff -buttons  and  tie ; 
she  insisted  on  brushing  his  hair,  too,  to  his  private 
disgust,  though  he  chivalrously  suffered  it  and 
thanked  her  afterwards.  Mrs.  McQuair  wore  a  thin 
gray  dress  matching  her  gray  hair,  so  that  she  seemed 
to  be  all  gray,  and  exquisitely  cool.  The  long  win- 
dows reaching  to  the  floor  in  the  dining-room  wrere 
raised,  and  one  could  see  out  onto  the  porch  and  down 
the  lawn  to  the  flowTer-garden ;  and  as  the  twilight 
deepened,  little  lights  came  pricking  out  in  lines  and 
clusters  all  over  the  shadowy  distance.  Randon 
thought  this  wras  beautiful;  and  it  was  with  amaze- 
ment that  he  heard  his  father  expressing  precisely  the 
contrary  opinion  in  vigorous  distaste. 

"  The  subdivision  is  getting  pretty  close  —  too 
close  altogether !  "  he  said.  "  Wherever  you  look  it 
crowTds  in.  We're  an  island.  It's  a  shame  our  poor 
old  place  has  to  be  so  spoiled/' 

"  Everybody  says  the  property  all  around  here  has 
got  too  valuable  to  be  held  unimproved  any  longer," 
Mrs.  McQuair  said. 

"  Oh  yes,  of  course.  You'd  be  eaten  up  with  taxes 
and  assessments.  But  improved  — !  Well,  I  sup- 
pose from  a  contractor's  point  of  view  it's  an  improve- 
ment to  cram  twenty  cheap  jerry-built  little  coops  on 


56  THE  NOON-MARK 

a  piece  of  ground  not  big  enough  for  one  decent  house, 
and  get  them  all  rented  or  sold.  That's  the  extraor- 
dinary thing:  they  find  people  willing  to  live  in 
them ! "  said  Mr.  McQuair  with  a  look  of  wonder. 
"  As  we  came  along  to-day,  I  noticed  all  those  Maple- 
hurst  houses  are  occupied.  To  be  sure,  they  all  have 
yards  and  a  porch  —  but  otherwise  for  all  the  privacy 
about  them,  one  might  as  well  be  in  a  tenement.  The 
people  can't  care  anything  about  privacy,  though  — 
don't  want  to  be  private,  probably.  They'd  think  it 
lonesome !  You  and  I,  now  —  why,  our  notion  of  a 
home  is  being  off  to  ourselves  where  we  don't  have  to 
see  or  hear  or  come  in  any  sort  of  contact  with  other 
people  unless  we  choose.  As  long  as  I've  been  knock- 
ing around,  I've  never  got  over  that  feeling."  He 
paused,  gazing  out  of  the  window  with  a  slight  frown, 
absently  drumming  on  the  table.  "  Do  they  ever 
annoy  you?  " 

"Who?  The  subdivisionites?  Oh,  no,"  said  the 
lady,  tolerantly.  "  Occasional  raids  on  the  apple- 
trees  by  the  children.  I  thought  at  first  they  were 
dreadful  little  toughs,  but  then  I  reflected  that  the 
same  crime  has  been  committed  time  out  of  mind 
since  Adam  and  Mrs.  Adam  first  got  into  trouble,  and 
set  the  bad  example.  Boys,  you  know  — !  Your  own 
record  is  stainless,  of  course  —  " 

"  Of  course !  "  Randy's  father  assented,  grinning. 

"  It  seems  to  be  a  settlement  of  very  nice  plain  peo- 
ple—  small  clerks,  travelling-men,  public-school 
teachers  —  people  like  that,  you  know.  My  sewing- 
woman  lives  over  there  somewhere.  They  all  start 
off  to  work  in  the  mornings  and  come  home  at  eve- 
ning in  hordes.  There  isn't  a  saloon  in  the  place; 
two  or  three  churches,  Methodist  and  Catholic  mis- 


THE  NOON-MARE  57 

sions.  That  gives  you  an  idea  of  it.  Everybody  is 
thoroughly  respectable.  I  daresay  there  are  grades 
among  them ;  some  of  them  are  probably  not  consid- 
ered equals  by  the  others  — "  she  smiled  and 
shrugged.  "  That  seems  absurd  in  a  country  where, 
theoretically,  one  person  is  just  as  good  as  another." 

"  That  '  theoretically  '  is  well  put  in." 

"  Why,  I  might  have  said  '  actually,'  Aleck.  If 
any  foreigner  were  to  ask  me  who  constituted  Society 
in  this  country,  I  should  simply  have  to  tell  him  every- 
body that  was  out  of  jail !  " 

She  made  this  statement  with  every  appearance  of 
seriousness;  and  young  Mr.  Randon  McQuair,  need- 
less to  say,  had  not  the  dimmest  idea  of  what  she  was 
talking  about;  indeed,  he  was  earnestly  occupied  at 
the  moment  with  a  dish  of  corn  and  green  peppers 
baked  together  that  transcended  anything  in  his  ex- 
perience. As  for  the  older  McQuair,  he  laughed  out- 
right, and  Randy,  glancing  up  at  this  merriment, 
caught  the  same  look  on  her  face  that  it  seemed  to 
wear  so  often,  that  look  as  if  she  were  laughing  to 
herself  and  partly  at  herself.  She  saw  the  little  boy 
eyeing  her  with  his  grave  questioning  and  measuring 
survey  of  a  child,  and  spoke  to  him :  "  Well,  Ran- 
don—?" 

"  I  think  I  am  going  to  like  it  here,"  said  Randon 
soberly. 


Ill 

NO  more  ceremonies  attended  the  introduction 
of  the  youthful  hero,  Mr.  Kandon  McQuair, 
to  the  halls  of  his  ancestors.  The  very  next 
morning  he  woke  up  feeling  as  if  he  had  lived  all  his 
life  in  the  room  with  the  two  hundred-and-odd  birds 
on  its  north  wall,  and  had  never  slept  out  of  the 
spindled  bed.  To  be  sure  the  youngster  was  accus- 
tomed to  change  and  not  difficult  about  accommoda- 
tions; as  has  been  said,  he  had  never  stayed  long 
enough  anywhere  to  form  attachments  to  an  environ- 
ment or  set  of  people,  so  he  missed  nobody  and  suf- 
fered from  no  sensation  of  strangeness  or  lonesome- 
ness.  As  time  went  on,  when  warm-hearted  persons 
expended  sentiment  upon  him,  Randy  used  to  squirm 
under  it  much  more  annoyed  and  perplexed  and  hu- 
miliated by  the  unmerited  sympathy  than  he  would 
have  been  by,  let  us  say  unmerited  neglect  or  reproof. 
Poor,  lonely,  motherless,  little  boy,  indeed !  He  was 
all  right;  or  if  ever  he  wasn't  all  right  it  Avas  his 
own  look-out;  he  could  take  care  of  himself.  And 
what  was  the  matter  with  his  home,  or  with  Mrs. 
McQuair?  Weren't  they  all  right  too?  Well,  then  — ? 
In  after  years  when  he  came  to  be  a  better  judge, 
he  gave  Mrs.  McQuair  more  credit  than  was  really 
due  her  —  so,  at  least,  she  would  say  with  her  invet- 
erate air  of  poking  dry  fun  equally  at  the  world  and 
herself  —  for  creating  and  maintaining  a  domestic 

58 


THE  NOON-MARK  59 

atmosphere  wherein  everybody  was  invariably  at 
home  and  at  ease.  Life  in  the  old  house  was  cheer- 
ful, democratic,  unrestricted,  yet  all  the  while  gov- 
erned by  a  gracious  propriety;  simplicity,  good  taste 
and  good  manners  seemed  native  to  it,  and  physical 
comfort  merely  incidental,  achieved  without  effort. 
No  one  was  ever  seen  to  work  too  hard,  nobody  appar- 
ently was  ever  put  to  any  trouble ;  the  whole  machin- 
ery of  housekeeping  functioned  out  of  sight,  smoothly, 
noiselessly  and  one  would  have  said  without  guidance. 
Even  the  introduction  of  so  uneasy  an  element  as  a 
small  boy  could  not  disarrange  it;  the  lady  of  the 
house  was  not  only  capable  of  "  getting  along  with 
anybody  "  as  her  stepson  had  remarked,  she  could 
magically  impart  that  faculty  to  others. 

Mrs.  Hector  McQuair  had  had  the  opportunity  to 
demonstrate  her  gift  for  some  years  during  her  hus- 
band's lifetime.  The  late  Doctor  McQuair,  at  past 
middle-age,  with  a  family  of  grown  children  all  of 
whom,  unlike  little  Ranny,  recollected  their  mother 
—  Aleck,  the  youngest,  was  fifteen  or  so  when  she 
died  —  Doctor  McQuair,  I  say,  performed  the  well- 
nigh  unheard-of  feat  of  making  a  perfectly  sensible 
and  suitable  second  marriage,  to  which  no  one,  least 
of  all  the  younger  McQuairs  themselves,  ever  found 
the  slightest  objection.  Miss  Virginia  Carey,  though 
nowhere  near  the  doctor's  age,  was  no  light-headed, 
pretty  young  thing  of  the  stripe  to  whom  well-to-do 
elderly  gentlemen  so  frequently  succumb,  according  to 
popular  belief,  that  is.  She  must  have  reached  her 
thirty-fifth  year,  had  some  money  of  her  own,  came 
of  a  well-known  family,  and  had  been  considered  a 
settled  old  maid  —  though  not,  it  was  reported,  for 
lack  of  "  chances  " ;  she  was  not  unattractive,  and  a 


(30  THE  NOON-MARK 

good  many  men,  first  and  last,  had  been  significantly 
attentive  to  her.  People  did  not  speak  of  her  as  a 
bright  woman,  and  as  she  never  said  or  did  anything 
conspicuously  original  or  interesting,  perhaps  she  was 
not  particularly  bright ;  she  was  only  able  to  "  get 
along  with  everybody."  She  took  over  the  manage- 
ment of  the  doctor's  household  without  giving  offense 
to  a  single  one  of  its  members ;  the  fact  that  the  two 
McQuair  daughters  were  both  married  with  homes  of 
their  own  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  their 
complacence,  but  as  for  the  sons,  beginning  with  a 
civil  indifference,  they  ended  with  hearty  liking! 
She  made  a  man  so  comfortable ;  she  always  listened 
to  his  stories,  and  laughed  at  his  jokes;  she  never 
asked  either  too  many  or  too  few  questions,  never  in- 
sisted, never  bullied,  never,  never  wept.  One  by  one 
they  married,  and  —  excepting  Aleck  whose  profes- 
sion took  him  too  far  afield  —  they  used  to  bring  their 
wives  and  the  grandchildren  back  to  the  old  house  on 
visits  which  were  always  successful  and  always  hap- 
pily remembered.  However  Mrs.  Hector  did  it,  she 
must  have  done  it  superlatively  well;  for  it  is  the 
solemn  truth  that  after  the  old  doctor  died  —  he  got 
to  be  pretty  feeble  and  was  a  good  deal  of  a  care, 
although  his  mind  was  clear  and  active  as  ever  up 
to  the  last  —  not  one  of  the  family  had  anything  to 
say  against  his  disposition  of  the  property,  though 
he  left  her  considerably  more  than  what  would  have 
been  legally  a  widow's  portion.  That  was  a  vindi- 
cation, if  you  like!  Though  in  justice  it  should  be 
said  that  the  McQuairs  were  a  good  stock,  kindly,  in- 
telligent, right-minded  men  and  women;  they  would 
have  shrunk  from  any  ignoble  squabble  over  it,  even 
if  the  old  gentleman's  will  had  been  injuriously  un- 


THE  NOON-MARK  61 

fair.  They  kept  up  pleasant  relations  with  the  widow, 
making  visits  every  now  and  then  as  in  their  father's 
lifetime ;  and  when  some  two  years  after  poor  Louise 
MeQuairs  death  down  there  in  Guadalajara,  Aleck 
brought  his  little  boy  back  to  the  States  to  be  edu- 
cated and  taken  care  of,  it  seemed  entirely  natural 
that  he  should  apply  to  the  quasi-grandmother. 

"  Any  of  us  would  be  glad  to  have  the  child,"  the 
brothers  and  sisters  said  —  and  they  meant  it;  the 
MeQuairs,  I  repeat  were  nice  people,  salt-of-the-earth 
people.  "  But  Aleck  wants  him  brought  up  in  the 
old  home  where  we  were  all  of  us  born.  And  you 
know  Avhat  Mrs.  McQuair  is ;  Randon  couldn't  be  with 
anybody  that  would  be  lovelier  to  him,  or  have  a 
better  influence  over  him.7' 

They  all  called  her  Mrs.  McQuair,  and  Randon  him- 
self never  addressed  her  in  any  more  informal  fashion, 
not  even  when  he  grew  old  enough  to  make  that  choice 
about  intimacy  which  she  had  forseen  at  their  first 
meeting.  But,  by  that  time,  in  so  far  as  a  name 
stands  for  anything  at  all,  "  Mrs.  McQuair  "  denoted 
for  Randon  as  much  affectionate  familiarity  as  the 
most  endearing  term  that  ever  was  coined;  he  would 
have  indignantly  rejected  "  Grandma,"  on  the  ground 
that  his  Mrs.  McQuair  was  not  like  a  "  grandma," 
not  like  those  of  his  observation  anyhow,  the  actual 
grandmas  appertaining  to  other  boys.  They  couldn't 
hold  a  candle  to  her!  He  was  very  fond  of  her  in  a 
boy's  reticent  way;  an  observer  would  have  been  hard 
put  to  it  to  understand  why,  since  it  was  certainly 
not  for  the  reasons  commonly  assigned.  She  was 
kindness  itself,  but  she  never  "  mothered  "  the  lad. 
When  Randon  had  the  measles,  it  was  not  Mrs.  Mc- 
Quair who  took  care  of  him;  she  sent  for  a  trained 


62  THE  NOON-MARK 

nurse.  And  the  other  time,  the  time  he  fell  out  of  one 
of  those  same  famous  apple-trees  and  broke  his  leg, 
she  got  to  the  spot  and  rendered  prompt,  gentle  and 
efficacious  relief  —  but  afterwards  she  had  another 
trained  nurse.  She  did  not  pet  the  little  boy,  but 
neither  did  she  tease  or  hector  him;  she  listened  to 
everything  he  had  to  say,  and  was  always  ready  with 
a  laugh  in  the  right  place  exactly  as  with  his  father 
before  him. 

"...  We  get  along  together  wonderfully  well," 
she  wrote  to  Alexander  McQuair  in  one  of  her  weekly 
bulletins.  "  I  don't  make  a  fuss  over  him,  as  I  have 
an  idea  that  children  really  don't  like  having  a  fuss 
made  over  them  —  healthy,  unspoiled,  normal  chil- 
dren, I  mean;  at  any  rate,  they  should,  in  conscience, 
be  allowed  a  choice  in  the  matter.  We  grown  people 
are  quick  enough  to  let  it  be  known  when  we  want 
to  be  fussed  over  and  when  not;  why  shouldn't  a 
child  have  the  same  freedom?  Why  should  we  force 
our  attentions  on  a  child  because  he  is  a  child  and 
can't  evade  us?  Live  and  let  live.  I  remember  hat- 
ing to  be  kissed  by  anybody  and  everybody  when  I 
was  Randon's  age.  ...  I  think,  if  people  would 
make  a  success  of  living  together,  to  be  just  is  more 
important  than  to  be  affectionate.  Good  intentions 
won't  always  serve;  they  sometimes  go  so  terribly 
astray.  There's  that  old  saying,  you  know,  about 
Hell  being  paved  with  them.  I  used  to  suppose  that 
meant  broken  promises  and  so  on.  I  know  now  it's 
the  ones  that  are  kept !  .  .  .  We  had  better  not  be  in 
such  a  hurry  to  be  kind  as  to  forget  to  be  polite ;  but 
one  doesn't  always  realize  that  being  polite  takes  a 
formidable  exertion  of  the  mind.  The  trouble  is  one 
can't  be  polite  four  days  in  the  week,  or  to-morrow 


THE  NOON-MARK  63 

morning  at  half-past  ten ;  one  must  be  polite  all  the 
time  to  be  really  effective  —  to  '  get  results'  as  you 
say.  With  a  little  boy,  the  necessity  for  setting  an 
example  of  politeness  is  bewilderingly  mixed-up  with 
the  counter  necessity  for  laying  down  the  law  occa- 
sionally. However,  Randon  is  reasonable,  and  I  try 
not  to  be  arbitrary.  He  came  to  me  the  other  day 
with  a  request  to  have  another  boy  to  play  with  him. 
I  said  yes.  '  But '  said  I,  *  Randon,  you  know  those 
problems  in  the  arithmetic  where  you  start  with  a 
number  and  multiply  and  it  keeps  piling  up  at  a  cer- 
tain rate?  If  one  bushel  of  corn  will  make  four 
pounds  of  meal,  then  two  bushels  equal  eight  pounds 
of  meal,  and  so  on  — ?  ' 

"  He  listened,  eyeing  me  shrewdly.  *  You're  laugh- 
ing,' he  said,  nodding  his  funny  little  wise  head. 
i  But  I  don't  mind.  You're  always  laughing  to  your- 
self.    Go  ahead!     If  twro  bushels — ?' 

"  i  We'll  say  "  boys  "  instead  of  bushels,'  said  I. 
i  If  one  boy  equals  two  boys,  then  two  boys  equal  — ?  ' 

" '  Four  boys?'  says  the  youngster,  puzzled  but 
with  a  grin  dawning.  He  is  sharp  enough,  and  I 
think  already  had  some  idea  of  what  I  was  driving  at. 

"  i  No,'  said  I  solemnly.  i  That's  just  the  curious 
mathematical  truth  I  want  to  show  you.  If  one  boy 
equals  two  boys,  then  two  boys  equal  ten  boys;  and 
ten  boys  presently  equal  fifty  boys,  and  fifty  boys  — ' 

"But  he  wouldn't  let  me  get  any  farther!  '  Aw, 
say,  there  won't  be  that  many,'  he  protested.  '  I 
won't  let  'em  come  —  not  that  many  anyhow.  Aw, 
say  — !'  So,  of  course,  I  capitulated;  and  I'm  sure 
there  were  not  more  than  fifteen  boys,  and  they  all 
behaved  very  well !  " 

Randon  was  probably  about  ten  at  this  time,  or  so 


64  THE  NOON-MARK 

he  guessed  on  finding  the  letter  years  after  amongst 
some  old  papers  of  his  father's ;  it  was  undated,  a  fact 
not  without  precedent  in  a  lady's  correspondence. 
He  laughed,  remembering  the  occurrence  very  well. 
However,  it  was  not  the  first  occasion  on  which  he  had 
had  a  boy  to  play  with  him;  from  the  beginning  Mrs. 
McQuair  was  singularly  open-minded  on  that  point, 
or  seemed  so,  in  comparison  with  other  boys'  feminine 
autocrats.  Eandy  might  ask  whomsoever  he  fancied, 
and  they  might  do  almost  anything  they  chose,  ex- 
cept mistreat  animals  or  the  flower-garden  —  reason- 
able inhibitions,  and  readily  understood  by  any  ordi- 
narily decent  and  manly  boy.  "  I  don't  make  any  in- 
quiries about  their  names  and  families,"  she  con- 
fessed in  another  letter.  "  If  he  were  a  girl,  one 
would  have  to  be  more  careful ;  but  boys  will  be  demo- 
cratic, whatever!  He  has  made  a  number  of  friends 
at  school,  and  I  believe  his  chief  chum  is  our  night- 
watchman's  son!  To  me  they  all  look  a  good  deal 
alike,  plebeian  or  patrician;  I  can't  tell  them  apart. 
Naturally  I  do  not  linger  long  in  their  society;  it's 
only  too  evident  that  I'm  a  terrific  damper  on  their 
activities,  whether  of  sport  or  council.  They  are 
mostly  stocky  little  chaps,  always  lacking  a  front 
tooth  or  a  back  tooth  or  a  tooth  somewhere,  and  able 
to  produce  remarkable  symphonic  variations  on  any 
theme  by  whistling  or  blowing  or  squeaking  through 
the  temporary  gap.  They  have  theories  on  the  sub- 
ject of  washing  —  or  not  washing  —  and  on  dress, 
and  on  going  to  Sunday-school  or  dancing-school,  and 
on  what  is  suitable  to  be  carried  in  one's  pockets, 
which  appear  to  me  revolutionary,  but  Randy  shares 
them,  so  I  daresay  they  are  the  average  boy's.  .  .  . 
You  were  asking  who  his  associates  were  and  I  have 


THE  NOON-MARK  G5 

now  revealed  that  I  don't  know  much  about  them! 
That  may  seem  criminally  careless  —  but  did  your 
mother  know  all  about  yours?  Randon's  haven't  led 
him  into  evil  xvt,  anyhow;  he  doesn't  seem  to  me  to  be 
that  kind  of  boy  that  would  be  led  or  driven  either; 
much  more  likely  to  get  into  trouble  on  some  head- 
long impulse  of  his  own,  I  imagine.  .  .  .  I've  often 
wondered  what  I  would  do  if  I  caught  him  in  an 
untruth ;  I  don't  know ;  I'm  afraid  I  wouldn't  do  any- 
thing. I  think  —  that  is,  I  hope —  he  hasn't  much 
temptation  to  be  other  than  honest  with  me;  he  has 
never  shown  the  least  fear  of  me ;  on  the  contrary  we 
are  such  good  friends  that  I  don't  believe  he  would 
hesitate  to  tell  me  even  something  damaging,  pro- 
vided I  had  to  be  told!  One  doesn't  always  have  to 
tell  everything  one  knows,  and  least  said,  soonest 
mended  is  in  many  cases  a  good  rule  to  go  by,  you 
know.  ...  As  for  his  little  girl  associates,  there 
aren't  any,  I  am  not  at  all  sorry  to  report.  He  hasn't 
yet  reached  the  age  when  they  begin  to  notice  the 
petticoats.  ..." 

Whatever  her  letters  may  betray  of  Mrs.  McQuair's 
own  character,  they  indicate  a  tolerably  accurate 
estimate  of  Randon's;  he  was  without  doubt  a  fair 
sample  of  the  American  boy.  He  did  well  in  school, 
and  was  liked  by  his  fellows  amongst  whom,  however, 
he  never  became  a  leader;  the  qualities  well-known 
yet  impossible  of  definition  which  make  for  leadership 
were  not  in  him.  It  was  true  a  certain  popularity 
accrued  to  him  from  his  place  of  residence,  the  roomy 
old  house  and  grounds  in  combination  with  their  mir- 
aculously lenient  chatelaine,  holding  out  many  at- 
tractions. Moreover,  it  was  handy  to  "  the  dumps  " 
where  the  youth  of  the  vicinity  had  a  makeshift  base- 


66  THE  NOON-MARK 

ball  field,  and  used  besides  to  set  up  their  circuses, 
gypsy  encampments,  Wild  West  dramas,  and  so  forth, 
no  one  objecting  to  their  activities  in  that  derelict 
territory.  In  fact,  the  Maplehurst  mothers  whose 
homes  were  adjacent  looked  upon  it  as  directly 
planned  and  located  by  Providence  to  keep  the  boys 
harmlessly  busy  within  sight  and  hearing.  Not  one 
of  the  city  parks  could  furnish  such  varied  and  en- 
during entertainment.  Anything  on  this  turning 
globe  that  a  boy  needed  for  any  sort  of  experiment  or 
in  any  construction,  trap,  cage,  machine,  vehicle,  toy 
or  weapon,  could  be  found  on  the  dumps ;  he  had  but 
to  step  out  of  his  own  back-door,  or  in  Ranny  Mc- 
Quair's  case,  to  drop  through  the  hole  in  the  fence, 
and  lo,  an  Arabian  Nights'  accumulation  wherein  an 
hour  of  the  most  casual  exploration  would  discover 
just  the  materials  he  sought  or,  ten  to  one,  something 
better.  The  dumps  were  at  once  a  source  of  standard 
supplies  and  an  inexhaustible  bazaar  of  novelties. 

Randon's  gang  —  for  of  course  he  belonged  to  a 
gang ;  no  boy  of  any  spirit  ever  existed  who  was  not  a 
member  of  some  gang,  band  or  crowd  —  was  not  the 
only  one  which  enjoyed  the  privileges  of  the  dumps. 
There  were  several,  exhibiting  a  wide  diversity  of 
character ;  the  universally  condemned  "  tough  gang  " 
was  made  up  of  young  hoodlums,  white  and  colored 
from  a  nebulous  district  bordering  Maplehurst  on  the 
north;  they  were  older  than  Randy's  boys,  averaging 
fifteen  or  sixteen  years,  stone-throwers,  window- 
breakers,  users  of  foul  language,  familiar  with  saloon 
precincts,  not  too  scrupulous  about  property  rights. 
The  smaller  lads  dispersed  upon  their  baleful  ap- 
proach, either  in  fear  or  distaste,  or  shoo-ed  home- 


THE  NOON-MARK  67 

wards  by  apprehensive  mothers.  The  other  compa- 
nies, apart  from  an  occasional  black  sheep,  were 
mostly  peaceable,  law-abiding  boys,  ordinarily  adven- 
turous and  mischievous.  There  was  also  a  comrade- 
ship composed  of  industrious,  commercially-inclined 
souls  who  frequented  the  dumps  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  mining  out  the  old  iron  and  other  saleable  junk 
occurring  in  rich  deposits  here  and  there,  and  dis- 
posing of  it  to  dealers  in  that  species  of  merchandise. 
By  fits  and  starts,  Mr.  Randon  himself,  family  tradi- 
tions to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  engaged  in  this 
traffic,  as  in  other  get-rich-quick  enterprises  such  as 
shovelling  snow,  cutting  grass,  peddling  picture  post- 
cards, ornamental  labels  for  fruit-jars,  and  the  like. 
Once  he  very  nearly  earned  the  price  of  a  general 
admission  to  the  circus;  Mrs.  McQuair,  finding  that 
he  had  fifty-three  cents  saved  up,  supplied  the  balance, 
without  too  much  comment.  McQuair  standards 
and  those  with  which  she  herself  had  been  brought  up 
would  not  have  allowed  a  son  of  the  house  to  earn 
anything  by  manual  labor;  still  she  did  not  forbid  it. 
Randon's  industry  seemed  to  move  her  to  the  same 
amiable  amusement  with  which  she  regarded  —  or 
had  the  air  of  regarding  —  the  world  in  general. 

"  No,  I  don't  mind,"  she  said,  when  the  youngster, 
whose  conscience  troubled  him  a  little  on  this  score, 
belatedly  invited  her  sanction.  "  You  will  have  to 
work  when  you  grow  up.  It  can't  possibly  hurt  you 
to  work  now." 

"  I'm  going  to  have  an  office  when  I  grow  up, 
though.  I'm  going  to  have  a  business.  I'm  not  go- 
ing to  work  this  way,  of  course,"  Randy  told  her,  re- 
assuringly. 


68  THE  NOON-MARK 

"  Yes?  I  think  jour  father  would  rather  you  went 
into  a  profession.  You  might  be  a  doctor,  for  in- 
stance, like  your  grandfather,  you  know." 

Randon  considered  dubiously.  "  I  don't  like  tak- 
ing care  of  sick  people  —  unless  it's  dogs  or  horses. 
I  wouldn't  mind  dogs  and  horses  —  being  a  doctor 
for  them,  I  mean." 

Mercy!  Mrs.  McQuair's  smile  almost  became  a 
laugh,  but  she  held  it  in  check  valiantly.  "  Perhaps 
business  would  be  better  after  all.  I  suppose  all  the 
boys  expect  to  go  into  business." 

All  the  boys  did  not  by  any  means  expect  to  go  into 
business;  they  wanted  to  be  bare-back  riders,  or  cap- 
tains of  Hook-and-Ladder  Company  No.  10,  or  engi- 
neers on  the  Big  Four,  as  Randy  knew  very  well. 
But  he  answered  in  vague  and  non-committal  phrases ; 
uh-huh  —  yeah  —  maybe  —  he  shouldn't  wonder  — 
with  the  innocent  and  absolutely  defeating  inscruta- 
bility of  childhood.  Mrs.  McQuair  felt  as  if  a  door 
had  been  politely  closed  and  locked  in  her  face.  And 
serve  her  right,  too !  she  thought  with  a  kind  of  wist- 
ful mockery.  Who  was  she  to  invade  the  boys'  quaint 
reservation?  It  was  no  thoroughfare  for  prying  old 
women ;  and  she  retreated  humbly.  "  What  kind  of 
work  have  you  found  pays  the  best?  " 

Randon  pondered  that  question  too,  with  a  careful 
brow.  "  Why  —  I  couldn't  say  right  off.  Every- 
body pays  you  differently  for  the  same  thing,"  he 
explained  at  last. 

"  Oh,  but  I  should  think  you  would  set  one  price 
beforehand,  and  make  a  bargain." 

"  Why  —  now  —  some  of  us  does  —  do,'7  said  the 
boy,  fidgetting;  "but  you  can't  always,  you  know, 
because  people  are  kind  of  different  with  boys  from 


THE  NOON-MARK  69 

what  they  are  with  each  other.  I  know  a  boy  that 
carried  a  bundle  for  a  lady  from  t  he  cars,  and  it  was 
a  good  big  bundle,  and  when  they  got  to  her  house, 
he  told  her  it  was  a  dime,  and  she  thought  he  was 
just  doing  it  to  be  nice,  you  know  —  that's  what  she 
said,  anyway  —  and  she  got  awfully  mad,  and 
wouldn't  give  him  the  dime,  and  then  he  got  mad, 
but  after  a  while  she  gave  him  five  cents.  She  was  a 
Jew  lady." 

"  Oh !  " 

"  The  boy  was  a  Jew  boy,  too." 

"  Oh !  I  should  like  to  have  been  there.  It  must 
have  been  very  interesting !  " 

Randon  met  her  smile  with  suspicion;  but,  as  al- 
ways, something  about  it  disarmed  him  —  some  qual- 
ity of  detachment  that  invited  one  to  smile  at  her, 
too,  and  with  her.  In  the  smiles  of  other  grown-ups, 
indeed  about  their  whole  attitude,  there  never  lacked 
a  certain  condescension,  a  patronizing  tolerance 
which  the  youngster  dimly  perceived  and  dimly  re- 
sented; but  his  Mrs.  McQuair  never  assumed  that  they 
two  were  other  than  equals.  As  such,  he  conscien- 
tiously set  himself  to  enlighten  her.  "  No,  you 
wouldn't!  You  wouldn't  have  liked  it  a  bit.  I 
don't  believe  you  know  anybody  like  that.  I  don't 
know  what  her  name  was,  but  the  boy's  Solly  Bam- 
berger; he's  in  the  Fourth  Grade.  His  father's  got  a 
tailor-place  on  Myrtle  Avenue.  You  wouldn't  know 
him  ever  at  all  —  not  ever  at  all!" 

"  No,  I  don't  believe  I  would,"  Mrs.  McQuair  agreed. 
"  Men  know  tailors.  I  only  know  dressmakers,  of 
course  —  like  Miss  Stieffel,  for  instance." 

"  Ye-es,"  said  Randy  doubtfully.  It  seemed  some- 
how as  if  she  had  not  wholly  understood  him ;  but  he 


70  THE  NOON-MARK 

could  not  make  his  idea  clearer,  because  it  mysteri- 
ously eluded  even  Randy  himself. 

" .  .  .  The  veterinary  suggestion  was  rather  stag- 
gering," wrote  Mrs.  McQuair  afterwards.  "  But  I 
did  not  directly  oppose  it.  ...  I  would  be  the  last 
person  in  the  world  to  put  foolish  and  contemptible 
notions  about  social  grades  into  his  head  —  even  if  I 
could ;  but  consciously  I  have  never  tried  to.  Randon 
plays  with  all  kinds  of  boys,  as  you  see;  the  main 
thing  is  not  whose  sons  they  are,  but  are  they  decent, 
are  they  manly?  Now  I  believe  Randon  is;  and  boys 
—  men  too,  for  that  matter  —  are  pretty  sure  to  find 
their  own  level,  like  water,  it  seems  to  me.  He  doesn't 
make  any  distinctions  among  his  own  comrades;  but 
it  was  overwhelmingly  plain  that  he  considered  me  a 
very  different  sort  of  person  from  the  i  Jew  lady ' ; 
and  it  was  impossible  that  I  should  know  the  Bam- 
bergers  not  simply  because  they  happen  to  be  Jew 
tailors,  but  because  of  something  else.  Nor  did  bring- 
ing in  Miss  Stieffel  satisfy  him  —  I  only  did  it  to  see 
what  he  would  say,  of  course.  I  should  explain  that 
she  is  the  sewing-woman  I  have  who  comes  by  the  day 
for  a  fortnight  Spring  and  Fall,  and  puts  my  ward- 
robe in  order.  She  talks  a  good  deal  —  all  sewing- 
Avomen  do  —  not  always  entertainingly  or  in  the  best 
taste;  but  she  is  a  nice  woman  with  plenty  of  char- 
acter and  common-sense,  for  all  her  gossip,  and  the 
mainstay  of  her  family  which  I  have  gathered  is  a 
large  one,  and  a  rather  shiftless,  easy-going  lot.  Her 
table-manners  leave  something  to  be  desired,  and  she 
makes  an  unlovely  noise  in  clearing  her  throat,  but 
Randy  would  not  take  things  like  that  into  account. 
He  sees  that  she  works  for  her  living  and  that  I 
don't  have  to,  but  that  is  evidently  not  the  difference 


THE  NOON-MARK  71 

that  puzzles  him.  The  queer  thing  is  that  he  doesn't 
conceive  of  himself,  only  of  me,  as  in  a  different  class 
from  Miss  Stieffel !  " 

Mrs.  McQuair,  though  she  differed  from  most  par- 
ents and  guardians  by  smilingly  disclaiming  any 
very  intimate  acquaintance  with  her  young  charge's 
private  affairs,  would  nevertheless  have  been  some- 
what disconcerted  to  find  that  she  knew  even  less 
than  she  thought  she  knew.  Randon  was  in  a  much 
better  position  to  make  distinctions  between  herself 
and  the  Stieffels,  for  instance,  even  if  he  could  not 
exactly  define  them,  than  the  old  lady  dreamed;  he 
knew  more  about  the  Stieffel  household  at  first  hand 
than  Mrs.  McQuair,  hedged  with  conventions,  would 
have  found  out  in  a  year  had  she  bent  all  her  clever- 
ness, her  gentlewoman's  tact  and  her  genuine  human- 
ity to  the  effort.  And  as  to  that  other  assertion  of 
hers,  made  in  entire  good  faith  a  while  back,  that  he 
had  no  little  girl  associates,  she  was  as  far  wide  of 
the  mark  as  —  as  the  rest  of  us,  even  the  most  studi- 
ously and  affectionately  observant,  when  we  lay  claim 
to  a  like  wisdom.  Who  really  knows  what  is  going  on 
in  his  small  son's  head,  to  say  nothing  of  the  young- 
ster's heart?  Although  without  fear  and  without  re- 
proach, you  and  I  can  remember  occasions  when  we 
did  not  render  a  strict  account  of  our  every  action, 
or  of  every  moment  of  our  time,  when,  in  short,  we 
did  not  think  it  necessary  to  tell  all  we  knew,  as  Mrs. 
McQuair  herself  has  sagely  pointed  out ;  in  conscience 
we  might  allow  children  the  same  liberty.  Randon 
was  not  of  a  secretive  disposition ;  it  was  only  that  he 
would  no  more  have  taken  his  grandmother  into  his 
confidence  upon  certain  matters  than  he  would  have 
taken  another  boy  into  his  confidence. 


72  THE  NOON-MARK 

Miss  Julia  Stieffel's  periodic  visits  to  the  house  co- 
incided —  on  a  loose  calculation  —  with  the  opening 
and  closing  of  the  baseball  season ;  so  that  long  before 
they  assumed  any  special  significance  for  him,  Randy 
had  become  familiar  with  the  sight  of  her,  lean  and 
flat-chested  in  garments  of  ominously  unstylish  cut 
and  material  considering  her  profession,  picking  her 
way  across  the  dumps,  with  a  tight  little  bundle  of 
work  under  one  arm,  her  skirts  bouncing  unbecom- 
ingly in  the  wind,  her  hat  invariably  askew.  Many 
a  time  he  had  to  lower  his  bat  or  pull  up  short  in  a 
dash  between  bases,  to  avoid  her.  "  Now  don't  you 
kids  get  fresh  with  that  baseball  directly  my  back's 
turned!  I  don't  want  no  baseball  sailing  into  me 
accidentally  on  purpose ! "  she  would  proclaim  in  a 
high,  strident  and  hysterically  peremptory  voice, 
shooting  nervous  glances  this  way  and  that  out  of  her 
tired,  dull-brown  eyes;  and  the  boys,  while  not  resist- 
ing the  temptation  to  "  holler  "  and  make  faces  and 
teasing  gestures,  heeded  the  injunction.  Not  that 
they  were  innately  chivalrous  or  obedient  — alas,  no ! 
The  plain  truth  was  that  sailing  a  ball  into  Miss 
Stieffel  would  have  been,  according  to  their  notion, 
a  very  poor  sort  of  entertainment,  not  worth  the  par- 
ental "  calling-down  "  they  would  infallibly  receive 
for  it,  later;  and  that  she  could  attribute  to  herself 
so  strong  an  attraction  aroused  a  kind  of  impatient 
and  contemptuous  pity.  All  they  wanted  of  her  was 
to  get  out  of  their  way,  and  she  might  walk  the  dumps 
the  livelong  day  in  perfect  safety.  Randy  McQuair 
never  inquired  the  name  of  so  casual  and  negligible  a 
person,  even  when  he  saw  her  following  the  alley  up 
to  and  through  the  rear  entrance  of  his  own  garden; 
he  was  well  acquainted  with  numberless  clerks  and 


THE  NOON-MARK  73 

delivery-men,  and  called  the  garbage-collector  Tim  to 
his  face,  but  no  normal  boy  could  be  in  the  slightest 
degree  interested  by  a  forlorn,  homely,  old-maid 
seamstress. 

"  She  ain't  anybody.  She  lives  at  Stieffel's  — 
that's  their  house,  that  red  brick  over  there.  I 
guess  she's  their  aunt,  or  something,"  a  companion 
once  volunteered,  and  Randy  forgot  the  information 
almost  as  soon  as  it  was  uttered. 

There  came  a  day,  however,  when  like  many  another 
young  gentleman  before  and  since,  worked  upon  by  the 
same  forces,  Master  McQuair  experienced  and  exhib- 
ited a  radical  change  of  attitude.  Who  so  awake  now 
to  Miss  Stieffel's  presence?  Who  so  polite,  lifting 
his  cap  and  grinning  amongst  his  freckles,  squiring 
her  to  the  alley-gate,  carrying  her  bundle?  And  yet 
all  the  while  it  is  gravely  to  be  doubted  if  he  cared 
one  jot  more  for  the  lady  than  he  had  before,  or 
courted  her  colorless,  flavorless  company  for  any  rea- 
son except  as  a  means  to  an  end  —  such  is  the  native 
duplicity  of  man,  and  so  early  does  it  manifest  itself. 
The  phenomenon  was  wrought  by  one  simple  occur- 
rence —  simple  with  the  simplicity  of  all  things  or 
events  truly  great,  Driven  indoors  one  April  after- 
noon by  a  steady  downpour  of  rain,  Randon  unexpect- 
edly came  face  to  face  in  the  back  entry  with  a  little 
girl  about  his  own  age  —  say,  between  eleven  and 
twelve  at  this  date  —  clad  in  what  anybody  else  would 
have  considered  an  ordinary  school  costume,  with  an 
upstanding  bow  of  pink  ribbon  apparently  spiked  to 
her  skull  on  top  of  a  heavy  mane  of  chestnut  hair, 
strap-slippers  on  her  narrow,  nimble  feet,  and  a  clump 
of  textbooks  slung  in  a  strap  over  her  shoulder.  To 
be    sure    she    did    wear    this    workaday    equipment 


74  THE  NOON-MARK 

with  a  certain  zest  and  finish ;  the  turn  of  her  head, 
the  motions  of  her  slim  little  body  symmetrically  un- 
developed, were  game  and  graceful ;  but  that  scarcely 
accounts  for  the  prodigious  effect  made  upon  Random 
For  him  the  plaid  gingham  trimmed  with  zig-zags  of 
braid  trailed  clouds  of  glory,  the  pink  bow  was  a  crest 
of  Romance,  the  strap-slippers  fit  for  Cinderella.  In  a 
word,  Master  Randon  McQuair,  having  got  along  thus 
far  scot-free  in  respect  to  his  heart,  incontinently  sur- 
rendered at  first  sight,  fell  desperately  in  love  with 
the  dressmaker's  niece  —  for  that  is  who  the  charmer 
presently  turned  out  to  be.  As  is  not  infrequently 
the  case,  he  was  pathetically  unaware  of  what  had 
happened  to  him ;  he  merely  found  himself  singularly 
incapable  of  speech  or  movement  at  a  moment  when  — 
as  he  also  realized  —  singularly  anxious  to  be  bril- 
liantly conversational  and  active.  He  could  only 
stand  and  glower  in  a  not  unpleasant  inner  tumult, 
until  the  little  girl  —  who,  for  her  part,  was  as  calm 
as  a  clock !  —  returning  his  gaze  straightforwardly, 
remarked :     "  Hello !  " 

Randy,  with  unconscionable  effort,  managed  to  get 
out  a  greeting  to  correspond :  "  Hello !  " 

"  You  didn't  know  I  was  here,"  said  the  little  girl, 
unconcernedly  shifting  her  load  of  books  and  moving 
on  towards  the  kitchen.  "  I  guess  you  were  scared 
coming  on  me  so  sudden. " 

Scared !  What  words  for  a  Romeo  to  hear  from  the 
lips  of  Juliet!  The  imputation  galvanized  him  into 
a  painful  activity  of  mind  and  body,  a  febrile  eager- 
ness to  disprove  it.  "  Hoo,  scared  !  Scared  nothing ! 
I  wouldn't  be  scared  by  you  —  I  wouldn't  be  scared  by 
anybody.     I  was  just  surprised." 


THE  NOON-MARK  75 

"  Oh,  well !  "  said  the  little  girl,  with  indifference. 
She  continued  her  advance. 

"  Where're  you  going?  "  said  Randon,  edging  in  the 
same  direction. 

"  Out  to  the  kitchen  to  wait  for  Aunt  Ju,"  said  the 
little  girl,  and  with  a  sudden  flare  of  defiance :  "  You 
needn't  to  worry.     I  won't  hurt  anything !  " 

Her  voice  was  ungentle,  her  manner  anything  but 
that  which  stamps  the  caste  of  Vere  de  Vere ;  but  the 
shrewish  mood  became  her;  her  great  dark  eyes  flamed, 
her  color  rose  delicately.  The  boy  was  too  infatuated 
—  yes,  infatuated  is  the  word  —  to  notice  anything  ex- 
cept that  this  beautiful  little  creature  was,  as  he 
would  have  put  it,  mad  about  something  —  something 
which,  of  course,  he  himself  must  have  done,  for  she 
was  accusation  embodied ;  he  had  no  idea  what  it  was, 
but  he  felt  stupid  and  unworthy  enough  in  her  radiant 
presence  to  have  committed  almost  any  crime.  "I  — 
I  didn't  mean  anything  —  I  just  —  I  just  — "  he  stam- 
mered helplessly.  "  My  name's  Randon  McQuair.  I 
live  here." 

"  Tell  me  something  I  don't  know,"  retorted  the 
little  girl,  still  in  a  crisp  style;  but  something  must 
have  operated  to  soften  her,  perhaps  the  spectacle  of 
his  confusion;  for  she  allowed  Randon  to  maneuver 
between  her  and  the  door,  while  she  stood,  running  her 
fingers  up  and  down  her  shoulder-strap,  eyeing  him 
with  a  kind  of  shy  directness. 

"  Mine's  Nettie  —  Nettie  Stieffel,"  she  announced 
at  length,  hesitated,  perceptibly,  then  went  on  in  a 
rush :  "  I've  seen  you  before." 

"You  never?     Where?" 

"  Here." 


76  THE  NOON-MARK 

"Here!"  cried  out  Random 

She  looked  at  him,  tickled  by  his  astonishment, 
mischievously  bent  on  prolonging  the  mystification. 
"  Yeah !  " 

"  You  mean  at  school?     Or  around  the  dumps?  " 

Nettie  shook  her  head  tantalizingly.  "Nope! 
Here!" 

Randon  was  reduced  to  objecting:  "  Oh,  say  — !  "  a 
piece  of  futility  which  moved  the  little  girl  to  great 
glee,  in  which  he  presently  joined  in  a  muddle  of  de- 
light and  embarrassment.  Both  had  now  given  up  the 
pretense  of  any  business  or  errand ;  they  were  linger- 
ing in  the  back  hall  in  an  enjoyment  of  each  other's 
society  which  was  heightened  for  the  boy  by  a  spice 
of  secrecy.  He  had  every  instinct  of  honesty,  but 
somehow  —  somehow  this  species  of  adventure  fell 
into  the  class  of  things  that  one  kept  to  oneself.  He 
wxas  acutely  conscious  that  he  did  not  want  any  third 
person,  above  all  any  grown-up  person  to  interrupt  or 
overhear  them ;  he  knew  that  he  wanted  to  prolong 
the  moment  to  the  utmost,  that  he  wanted  it  to  occur 
again,  and  that  he  was  never  going  to  say  a  word  about 
it.  Nettie,  on  the  other  hand,  was  enjoying  herself 
thoroughly,  undeterred  by  any  arriere-pensees  what- 
soever; the  whole  world  might  have  looked  on  and  lis- 
tened for  all  she  cared ! 

"  i  Aw,  sa-ay ! '  "  she  mimicked.  "  Wouldn't  you 
like  to  know?     l  Aw,  sa-ay ! '  " 

"  I  can  make  you  tell,"  said  Randon  boldly,  moving 
nearer. 

"  Can,  huh?  You  better  look  out !  You  can't  start 
no  rough-house  with  me!  "  shrilled  Nettie,  gayly  bel- 
ligerent, unshrinking.  Almost  any  other  little  girl 
on  earth  would  have  divined  that  what  he  threatened 


THE  NOON-MARK  77 

was  a  caress,  not  —  good  gracious!  —  not  a  rough- 
house;  and  almost  any  other  little  girl  would  have 
countered  instinctively  with  the  feminine  weapons, 
coquettish  reluctance,  simulated  ignorance,  simulated 
fright,  simulated  anger.  Nettie,  instead  of  a  kiss, 
looked  forward  to  a  fight  —  and  looked  with  manifest 
relish !  The  pose  is  herewith  recommended  as  one  to 
be  added  to  the  list  of  defenses,  for  nothing  more  de- 
feating could  be  imagined.  Randon  stood  stock-still, 
confounded ;  that  a  boy  should  fight,  fight  in  earnest, 
with  a  girl  was  unthinkable;  even  a  mock  fight,  in 
fun,  was  unthinkable;  he  might  hurt  her.  Yet  this 
one  seemed  to  take  it  as  a  matter  of  course.  For  one 
instant  he  —  or  perhaps  the  gently-bred  generations 
behind  him  —  recoiled  with  a  distaste  not  far  from 
disgust;  then  he  remembered  with  ready  indulgence 
that  girls  were  always  funny ;  girls  didn't  understand. 

"  Go  on  and  make  me!  Make  me  tell,  why  don't 
you?  '•  jeered  the  goddess.  And  no  one  can  say  how 
this  little  scene  might  have  ended  had  not  the  goddess' 
aunt  walked  in  upon  it  at  that  precise  moment,  with 
her  eternal  bundle,  her  hat  on  one  side,  and  the  lint 
and  shreds  clinging  to  her  dress. 

"  Oh,  there  you  are,  Nettie !  Did  you  bring  the 
umbrell'?  I  wisht  you'd  run  and  get  my  rubbers. 
They're  in  the  laundry  sink.  Right  straight  ahead  of 
you  through  the  kitchen  and  on  out  back.  You  can't 
miss  it,"  she  directed  and  sank  wearily  into  a  chair. 
"  You  got  home,  too,  I  see,  Randy.  It's  raining  pretty 
hard,  ain't  it?  " 

That  evening  Randon  and  his  grandmother  sat  at 
dinner  in  the  fine  old  dining-room  with  the  charming 
blue  India  china  laid  out,  and  a  cluster  of  narcissus 
all  brave  in  fresh  green   and  yellow   in   the  silver 


78  THE  NOON-MARK 

christening-cup  that  had  been  handed  down  from  some 
ancestral  McQuair,  decorating  the  middle  of  the  table 
between  the  candles.  With  everything  as  usual,  well- 
ordered  and  unpretentious,  there  they  sat,  and  Mrs. 
McQuair  said :  "  I  hope  poor  Miss  Stieffel  didn't  get 
wet  going  home.  I  offered  her  an  umbrella,  but  she 
said  she  had  telephoned  home  for  somebody  to  bring 
her  one.  I  don't  know  whether  they  ever  got  here 
with  it,  or  not." 

"  They  got  here  all  right,"  said  Randy,  finishing 
his  charlotte  russe.  The  late  sentimental  experience 
had  not  impaired  his  appetite.     "  It  was  a  girl." 

"  Oh,  that  pretty  little  thing  with  the  black  eyes?  " 

"  I  don't  know  —  I  didn't  notice,"  said  Randy,  lying 
like  a  veteran. 

"  She  has  come  once  or  twice  before  with  things  for 
Miss  Stieffel  —  and  I  shouldn't  wonder,  for  that  mat- 
ter, if  the  young  Stieffels  were  not  quite  familiar  with 
our  apple  trees,"  said  Mrs.  McQuair,  tolerantly 
enough.  "  There's  a  perfect  raft  of  them,  the  aunt 
says  —  children,  I  mean,  not  apple-trees." 

Randon  had  a  sudden  illumination.  Apple  trees! 
Why,  of  course !  He  recalled  the  day  of  his  arrival, 
every  moment  of  which  was  still  vivid  in  his  memory 
even  after  the  lapse  of  what  seemed  like  a  century; 
he  was  such  a  little  fellow  then,  he  told  himself  patron- 
izingly, only  eight.  But  he  remembered,  or  fancied  he 
remembered,  exactly  the  look  in  those  snapping  black 
eyes,  as  she  ran  off,  making  a  face  at  him. 


IV 

IT  was  a  few  months  before  the  last  recorded  events 
that  Miss  Mildred  Aymar  had  been  added  to  the 
Stieffel  household.  Her  coming  was  invested 
with  a  certain  romance  for  the  children  partly,  no 
doubt,  by  their  mother's  cheaply  imagined  senti- 
mentalities, but  to  a  much  greater  degree  by  the  im- 
posing expense  and  distance  of  the  journey.  They 
bragged  about  it  unconscionably  at  school,  displaying 
the  colored  postcards  of  "  Indian  Store,  Albuquerque, 
N.  M.,"  "  Falls  of  the  Yosemite,"  "  Mormon  Taber- 
nacle, Salt  Lake  City,  Utah,"  and  so  on  by  way  of 
supporting  their  statements.  Honest  Frank  sent 
these  works  of  art  by  the  packet,  delighted  to  find 
"  souvenirs "  at  so  reasonable  a  price,  and  so  easy 
of  selection,  although,  to  be  sure,  he  was  not  able  to 
visit  one  tenth  of  the  localities  pictured,  his  round- 
trip-ticket  being  over  the  shortest  and  most  direct 
route  practicable.  "  Could  not  take  in  this  point," 
he  would  write,  "  but  seeing  enough  as  it  is  to  last 
me  the  rest  of  my  time.  This  is  a  great  country. 
Wish  you  were  here.  Affy.  Pop."  The  one  of  them 
that  made  the  most  impression  on  Nettie  bore  on  its 
face  the  title  "  Smothered  in  Flowers "  and  repre- 
sented a  brown  bungalow  structure  astonishingly  like 
the  Weavers',  with  spike-leaved  plants  on  either  hand 
of  the  entrance,  the  masses  of  pink  and  cream-colored 
bloom  asserted  to  be  geraniums  and  Marechale  Niel 
roses  masking  the  facade  to  the  very  roof.     It  was  this 

79 


80  THE  NOON-MARK 

insane  exaggeration  that  arrested  Nettie's  attention, 
not  the  graces  of  the  picture,  though  even  her  Aunt 
Julia  pronounced  it  "  real  pretty." 

"  Hoo,  there  ain't  any  flowers  that  grow  like  that !  " 
said  Nettie  with  contemptuous  skepticism.  "  I  guess 
they  just  put  'em  on  the  card  that  way  for  an  adver- 
tisement." And  to  point  out  that  the  postcard  was 
an  actual  photograph,  tinted,  availed  notking  against 
her  inexorably  literal  and  practical  intelligence. 
"  They  could  paint  'em  on  while  they  were  doing  the 
rest  of  the  coloring,  couldn't  they?  "  she  questioned, 
victoriously.  "  That's  what  I'd  do  —  only  I  wouldn't 
ever  want  to  fool  people  about  anything." 

"  Well,  you  better  not  get  to  thinking  you  know  it 
all,  Nettie,"  her  aunt  warned.  "  Places  are  different. 
You  wait  till  Pop  comes  home,  and  ask  him."  The 
common-sense  suggestion  commended  itself  to  the 
youngster,  though  Julia  had  no  thought  of  adapting 
her  remarks  to  her  small  niece's  character  and  under- 
standing. That  would  have  required  a  tact  or  dis- 
cernment with  which  Julia  was  not  gifted  any  more 
than  Nettie  herself.  They  were  sufficiently  alike  in 
other  respects  besides  to  regard  the  coming  of  the 
"  little  California  cousin  " —  as  Mrs.  Maggie  continu- 
ally referred  to  her  —  with  not  the  heartiest  senti- 
ment of  welcome  in  the  world.  It  was  "  all  right  " ; 
at  any  rate,  it  could  not  be  helped;  they  must  take 
her  in,  but —  The  family  numbered  eight  already, 
two  in  every  bed ;  there  were  never  enough  spoons  and 
tumblers  to  go  around ;  everybody's  clothes  were  any- 
body's clothes;  at  no  time  was  the  house  clean  and 
in  order  from  top  to  bottom ;  at  no  time  was  any  job 
wholly  completed;  at  no  time  were  they  without  a 
case  of  sickness  or  semi-sickness  —  mumps,  nose-bleed, 


THE  NOON-MARK  81 

cold,  sprained  joints,  infected  cuts,  Heaven  above 
knew  what.  Mrs.  Stieffel  was  capable  of  talking 
beatifically  all  day  long  about  the  little  California 
cousin,  without  making  a  single  effort  towards  assur- 
ing her  comfort  or  that  of  anybody  else,  and  this 
futile  emotionalism  irritated  the  provident  souls  of 
her  sister  and  daughter  without  their  being  exactly 
conscious  of  it.  Both  the  little  girl  and  the  old  maid 
were  inured  to  the  spectacle  of  material  details  ne- 
glected, ordinary  duties  and  responsibilities  let  slide; 
Nettie  had  never  known  any  other  way  of  life,  and  if 
Julia  ever  felt  disposed  to  cavil  she  sternly  reminded 
herself  of  her  own  conspicuous  failure  in  her  own 
sphere.  They  did  not  find  fault  with  Maggie,  they 
only  snapped  wrathfully  at  circumstances.  Some- 
times they  talked  matters  over  in  private,  Julia  with 
her  spectacles,  sitting  at  her  machine  at  ten  o'clock 
at  night  after  everybody  had  gone  to  bed,  Nettie  in 
her  nightgown  hunched  in  an  old  shawl  with  her  bare 
feet  tucked  under  her,  intermittently  wrestling  with 
to-morrow's  problems  in  arithmetic;,  a  labor  which  the 
getting  of  dinner  and  subsequent  clearing  away  had 
interrupted. 

"  Mom  and  Pop'll  have  to  take  Bunty  in  with  them, 
that's  all  there  is  to  it,"  Nettie  says,  decisively. 
"  Three  of  'em  in  together  that  way  will  keep  each 
other  warm,  so  they  won't  need  that  pink  comfort, 
and  it  can  go  on  the  boys'  bed.  Bunty's  the  hottest 
little  thing  that  ever  was ;  I  guess  babies  always  are. 
Gracious,  I  wish  this  house  had  just  one  more  room, 
don't  you?" 

"  My,  there's  enough  to  take  care  of  already,  Nettie. 
You  don't  want  any  more  beds  to  make?  " 

"  Well,  I  would  just  love  to  have  some  place  to 


82  THE  NOON-MARK 

myself !  "  says  the  child  wistfully,  and  then  with  reso- 
lution returns  to  her  problem,  as  Julia  dashes  up  an- 
other seam.  There  is  silence  for  a  while  in  the  little 
chilly  room  with  the  soiled  ribbon-and-rosebud  "  bed- 
room paper  "  on  its  walls,  the  soiled  counterpane  on 
the  white  iron  bed,  the  soiled  matting  on  the  floor 
which  is  liberally  littered  besides  with  Miss  Stieffel's 
sewing-scraps  and  ravelings.  Nettie's  clothes  are 
laid  straight  and  neatly  over  a  chair,  her  school-shoes 
posed  side  by  side  beneath  it.  The  child  loathed  this 
unkempt  background ;  that  she  did  not  attempt  to  cor- 
rect it  was  purely  a  physical  matter;  her  time  and  her 
small  strength  were  not  equal  to  the  task.  In  some 
recess  of  her  mind  she  dimly  and  dumbly  resented  the 
enforced  endurance  as  both  senseless  and  unfair;  the 
children  did  not  have  to  play  and  tumble  on  the  bed 
all  day  long,  her  aunt  might  put  the  trash  in  a  basket 
instead  of  throwing  it  helter-skelter  on  the  floor.  The 
family  only  noticed  her  protests  to  laugh  at  them; 
but  in  Nettie's  downright  conception,  there  was  noth- 
ing funny  about  it. 

"  Do  you  guess  you'll  have  to  make  her  clothes, 
Aunt  Julia?  " 

"  Why,  I  don't  know.  Buying  'em  ready-made  they 
cost  a  whole  lot  more  and  don't  wear  anywhere  near 
as  well.  Trouble  is  I  ain't  got  such  an  awful  lot  of 
spare  time.  Well,  we'll  see — "  Julia  said,  sighing. 
It  never  occurred  to  her  as  strange,  still  less  as  pa- 
thetic, that  she  should  be  discussing  these  hard  ques- 
tions of  ways  and  means  with  a  little  girl  only  twelve ; 
she  merely  thought  that  Nettie  was  a  real,  smart,  help- 
ful little  thing.  Years  ago  Julia  had  given  up  expect- 
ing anything  definite  or  satisfactory  out  of  such  a 
conference  with  her  sister-in-law. 


THE  NOON-MARK  83 

In  due  course  Frank  got  back,  and  the  California 
cousin  with  her  rich  blue-black  hair,  her  large,  odd 
slate-gray  eyes  abundantly  fringed  with  long  black 
lashes,  her  lovely  tea-rose  complexion,  was  introduced 
to  the  family  circle.  She  was  about  Nettie's  age  and 
size,  and  the  two  got  on  well  enough.  They  were  not 
in  the  least  alike,  being  —  apart  from  personal  tastes 
and  endowments  —  the  products  of  environments  as 
dissimilar  as  day  and  night,  as  far  asunder  as  the 
poles.  Millie  was  probably  by  nature  no  more  in- 
dolent than  most  of  us  are  inclined  to  be,  but  she 
scarcely  knew  what  work  was ;  she  had  literally  never 
seen  anybody  work  at  any  occupation  or  in  any  fash- 
ion which  Rochester  Avenue  and  Nettie  Stieffel  could 
understand.  The  society  of  b'hanas  and  b'hanees  had 
apparently  "  gotten  by  "  as  Frank  said,  managed  to 
live  and  enjoy  life  for  nothing!  It  was  marvelous. 
The  "  fruits  of  the  earth,"  a  kind  of  ornamental  phrase 
which  in  the  beginning  Millie  often  quoted  with  many 
other  ornamental  phrases,  were  their  staple  of  diet; 
they  sheltered  in  tents,  huts,  shacks,  anything;  they 
wore  whatever  came  handiest  —  in  Millie's  case  a  few 
weird  toga-like  garments  which  Julia,  in  fear  of  scan- 
dal, immediately  pitched  into  and  remodeled.  By 
way  of  church-services,  there  were  "  circles  "  where 
spiritual  and  intellectual  refreshment  was  dispensed 
by  some  self-appointed  votary;  what  doctrine  was 
preached,  or  what  practices  obtained,  Millie  was  suffi- 
ciently vague  about  to  relieve  Frank  of  some  dire 
uncertainties.  He  was  much  more  afraid  of  her  im- 
parting unwholesome  knowledge  to  his  own  and  the 
neighbors'  youngsters  than  Mrs.  Maggie;  the  latter 
took  that  oblique  interest  in  pruriency  which  distin- 
guishes the  refined  and  morally  uplifted  sex,  and  the 


84  THE  NOON-MARK 

society  intrigued  her  imagination  by  potential  inde- 
cencies which,  realized,  she  would  probably  have  found 
revolting. 

Who  paid  the  bills  for  this  transcendental  experi- 
ment, how  they  evaded  the  tax-collector  or  the  hun- 
dred assessments  levied  by  civilization  and  improve- 
ments, law  and  order,  was,  as  has  been  said,  a  mystery. 
For  one  thing,  they  had  no  schools  and  patronized 
none;  yet  Millie  could  read  and  write  much  better 
than  the  average  child  of  her  age,  much  better  even 
than  Nettie,  that  star  of  the  Eighth  Grade.  It  was 
very  evident,  however,  that  she  had  a  turn  that  way ; 
on  the  other  hand,  figures  were  a  sealed  book  to  her. 
Only  with  the  utmost  effort  and  largely  by  the  com- 
plaisance of  the  powers,  could  she  be  guided,  led, 
shoved,  juggled  through  intermediate  mathematics. 
But  when  Friday  afternoons,  or  days  of  fete,  or 
nights  of  entertainment  came  around,  it  was  inevit- 
ablv  Millie  Avmar  who  ascended  the  rostrum  angel- 
ically  pretty,  girlish,  timid,  appealing,  and  unfalter- 
ingly delivered  whatever  selection  had  been  decreed 
with  a  memory  that  never  failed,  in  a  voice  of  delight- 
ful cadences;  sweetly  shy  and  tremulous  as  she  looked, 
many  a  veteran  public  performer  might  have  envied 
her  self-possession.  It  was  a  question  if  she  under- 
stood one-half  of  what  she  was  reciting;  Catherine 
of  Aragon  before  the  judges,  Portia  to  Shylock,  "  Lest 
we  forget/'  "  Mr.  Dooley  on  Prohibition,"  the  Gettys- 
burg Speech  —  all  was  one  to  Millie ;  it  was  only  a 
matter  of  setting  her  a  good  copy.  Her  writing  was 
accomplished  with  equal  facility ;  verse  or  prose,  she 
could  reel  it  off  by  the  page,  the  ream,  the  folio.  Her 
achievements  in  this  line  vastly  impressed  Nettie,  who 
for  her  part  would  frankly  own  that  "  theme-work  " 


THE  NOON-MARK  85 

was  the  hardest  she  had  to  do.  "  I  never  can  think  of 
anything  to  say.  And  whenever  I  do,  why,  it  seems 
as  if  it  only  lasted  for  a  few  lines,  and  Miss  Orr  al- 
ways wants  ns  to  write  fifty  or  a  hundred/'  she  would 
complain  ingenuously. 

"  Oh,  I  just  love  it!  I  always  run  over,  and  have 
to  cut  some  off,"  Millie  said,  opening  her  big  eyes 
ecstatically  —  if  there  happened  to  be  a  boy  in  the 
neighborhood,  as  there  generally  was.  There  was  this 
difference  between  the  cousins:  that,  whereas  Nettie 
was  always  ready  to  help  anybody  out  with  a  knotty 
algebraic  equation,  and  not  only  could  but  generously 
would  take  any  more  backward  classmate  in  hand  and 
demonstrate  an  intricate  geometrical  figure  clearly 
and  patiently  until  the  other  grasped  it  —  whereas 
Nettie  was  constantly  willing  and  constantly  being 
called  upon,  Millie  seldom  extended  any  corresponding 
aid  in  the  branches  where  she  excelled,  and  never  was 
known  to  volunteer  it.  Miss  Aymar  cobbled  strictly 
on  her  own  last ! 

"  Why,  I  don't  know  what  I'm  going  to  say  myself. 
I  think  it's  a  perfectly  fierce  subject  to  write  on,"  she 
would  declare  helplessly.  "  I  was  just  going  to  ask 
you.  You  always  seem  to  think  up  something.  But 
boys  are  ever  so  much  more  original  than  girls  any- 
how. It's  honestly  not  fair  for  me  to  be  stuck  in  the 
same  class  with  you;  I  can't  keep  up  —  just  have  to 
tag  along  after  you  the  best  I  can,  I  suppose."  That 
the  mental  heavyweights  thus  addressed  were  invar- 
iably of  the  opposite  sex  may  safely  be  inferred. 
Millie  was  not  over-popular  with  her  girl  associates ; 
perhaps  she  was  too  pretty  —  though  that  did  not  in- 
terfere to  keep  Nettie  from  making  warm  friends 
amongst  them. 


86  THE  NOON-MARK 

And  now  Mr.  Randon  McQuair  came  on  the  scene, 
maneuvering  around  the  dumps  so  as  to  get  within 
range  of  the  Stieffel  back  fence  over  which  almost 
every  ball  he  batted  went  sailing  with  an  inexplicable 
perversity,  fertile  in  dozens  of  other  inane  devices  to 
make  himself  familiar  in  the  Stieffel  household,  me- 
andering by  the  house  at  least  twice  daily  with  his 
schoolbooks  under  his  arm,  though  it  took  him  squares 
and  squares  out  of  the  way  of  his  own  temple  of 
learning.  The  latter  was  a  private  temple,  by  the 
way;  the  grandson  of  all  the  McQuairs  could  not  go 
to  a  public  school  along  with  the  butcher,  the  baker, 
the  candlestick-maker,  though  he  might  consort  with 
them  elsewhere ;  boys  will  be  boys.  In  Randy's  case, 
his  seniors  had  forgotten  or  overlooked  the  equally 
irrefragable  truth  that  girls  will  be  girls ! 

To  do  Nettie  justice,  however,  she  did  not  encourage 
him  —  rather  the  reverse.  She  would  have  been  less 
than  human  not  to  have  guessed  what  all  this  moon- 
ing about,  these  ice-cream  sodas,  Valentine's  Day 
favors  and  the  rest  of  the  absurd  boyish  tokens  meant ; 
but,  alas  for  Randy,  they  all  left  her  cold.  She 
classed  him  with  the  other  suitors,  somewhere  between 
a  nuisance  and  a  convenience.  Contrary  to  Millie 
who  thoroughly  enjoyed  each  successive  flirtation  or 
for  that  matter  several  at  a  time,  and  let  no  lad  escape 
her  young  talons  until  he  had  been  bled,  squeezed, 
stripped  of  whatever  worldly  goods  he  could  part  with 
—  contrary  to  Millie,  Nettie  never  knew  what  to  do 
with  the  young  gentlemen.  Soft  speeches  embar- 
rassed her,  an  attempted  caress  drove  her  into  a 
towering  rage ;  the  spectacle  of  male  servility  shamed 
instead  of  flattering  her ;  she  did  not  want  to  be  helped 
and  waited  on,  and  to  accept  presents  and  attentions 


THE  NOON-MARK  87 

would  have  laid  her  fiercely  independent  little  soul 
under  an  unbearable  obligation.  In  spite  of  her  Bea- 
trice-versus-Benedict  attitude,  she  never  lacked  ad- 
mirers ;  and  one  might  have  supposed  that  the  formid- 
able attractions  of  the  other  little  girl  would  have 
aroused  her  latent  femininity.  But  nothing  was  far- 
ther from  Nettie's  mind  than  jealousy;  Millie  was 
welcome  to  any  of  her  following,  including  Randy  Mc- 
Quair. 

And  here  the  Fates  stepped  in  with  one  of  those 
small  ironic  adjustments  so  well  known  to  us  all. 
Randon  cared  not  a  jot  for  Millie  Aymar.  Her  eyes 
and  poses  annoyed  him,  or  moved  his  impatient  ridi- 
cule; he  saw  through  her  perfectly.  Even  at  twelve 
years  old,  the  gentleman's  son  could  perceive  a  dis- 
tinction not  only  between  little  girls  of  his  own  clan 
and  the  Millie  Aymars,  but  between  the  Millies  and 
the  Nettie  Stieffeis.  It  was  the  very  absence  of  fem- 
inine guile  about  the  latter  that  attracted  him ;  clean, 
proud  and  vigorous,  to  win  her  over  would  be  worth 
any  number  of  soft  interludes  with  Millie,  in  Randon's 
estimation.  Master  Randon  did  not  put  all  this  be- 
fore himself  in  the  above  set  of  fine  phrases ;  he  felt 
it  inarticulately  like  any  other  boy  — like,  in  fact, 
almost  all  the  boys  who  danced  attendance  on  Nettie. 
For  let  it  be  remarked  as  another  piece  of  irony  that 
it  was  always  the  gentler,  better-brought-up  and  bet- 
ter-behaved lads  that  took  a  fancy  to  the  tameless 
Miss  Stieffel,  whereas  all  the  pirates  and  outlaws  in- 
continently "  fell  for  "  Millie's  charms  —  in  their  own 
language.  This  latter  young  lady  was  not  particular 
about  their  character  or  morals;  sheep  or  wolves,  so 
long  as  they  wore  trousers  and  lavished  their  spend- 
ing-money  on  her,  they  were  equally  acceptable.     Net- 


88  THE  NOON-MARK 

tie,  for  an  oddity,  was  the  dissatisfied  one  —  dissatis- 
fied to  the  point  of  exasperation!  She  saw  herself 
condemned  to  the  attentions  of  all  the  molly-coddles, 
and  mamma's-boys  in  the  district,  spineless  creatures 
whom  she,  a  girl,  could  boss  and  bully  by  the  hour 
and  who  bored  her  in  proportion,  to  say  nothing  of 
making  her  ridiculous.  What  she  would  have  liked, 
for  the  rarity  and  excitement  of  it,  would  have  been 
to  be  bossed  and  bullied  herself.  If  she  could  have 
been  coaxed  or  hired  or  intimidated  into  confessing 
any  longing  in  that  direction,  it  would  have  been  for 
a  conqueror;  but  she  had  never  yet  encountered  this 
cave-man  hero,  unless  —  whisper  it  not !  —  unless  it 
might  be  Jim  Marvin. 

Jim  Marvin  belonged  to  the  tough  gang.  It  was  he, 
indeed,  who  had  led  Nettie  into  that  descent  on  Mrs. 
McQuair's  apple-trees  long  ago.  The  children  had 
always  known  each  other,  although  the  Marvin  station 
in  the  Maplehurst  hierarchy  was  a  shade  lower  down 
than  the  Stieffels'.  Jim's  father  was  a  brakeman  on 
the  Big  Four ;  Mrs.  Marvin's  mother  used  to  take  in 
washings,  and  it  was  while  doing  up  the  railroad 
shirts  and  overalls  that  the  match  had  been  made. 
They  lived  thriftlessly  and  not  without  an  occasional 
squabble  in  one  of  the  semi-slums  to  the  north  where 
the  tracks  came  in;  and  by  this  time  the  son  of  the 
house  was  a  handsome,  strapping  young  brute  of  four- 
teen or  so  with  the  pronounced  taste  for  sport  which 
accompanies  a  disinclination  to  any  variety  of  work 
or  study.  In  another  year,  or  as  soon  as  the  restric- 
tions upon  child-labor  imposed  by  a  righteous  State, 
ceased  to  apply  to  him,  Jim  would  have  a  job;  he 
swaggered  not  a  little  about  his  prospects,  but  in  the 
meanwhile  was  not  doing  much  either  in  class  or  out 


THE  NOON-MARK  89 

of  it,  to  fit  himself  for  the  resplendent  career  just  over 
his  horizon.  Truth  to  tell,  he  evaded  school  as  often 
as  possible,  shooting  craps,  loitering  around  the 
saloons  and  pool-rooms,  picking  up  a  dollar  at  odd 
times  in  ways  which  themselves  were  not  infrequently 
too  odd  to  bear  scrutiny.  Nettie  knew,  or  thought 
she  knew,  all  about  him;  and  with  her  shrewd  little 
brain  condemned  him,  while  yielding  a  secret  admira- 
tion to  the  dashing  renegade  in  her  heart.  It  may 
have  been  characteristic  of  Jim,  but  perhaps  is  of  all 
boys  at  that  age,  that  while  he  went  in  deadlv  fear 
of  being  caught  with  any  girl  or  of  showing  the  least 
disposition  towards  girls'  society,  he  was  by  no  means 
averse  to  an  acquaintance  carried  on  in  discreet  priv- 
acy. That  student  of  masculine  psychology,  Miss 
Aymar,  was  not  long  in  discovering  this  fact.  She 
was  not  afraid  to  cross  the  dumps  or  to  pass  by  corners 
where  the  tough  gang  were  in  the  habit  of  congregat- 
ing, not  she!  More  or  less  openly  she  knew  every 
member  of  it,  and  the  circumstances  lent  an  element 
of  adventure  to  an  affair  already  sufficiently  adven- 
turous. Nettie  was  not  afraid  either,  but  from  differ- 
ent reasons ;  she  was  not  afraid  of  anything,  arrogant- 
ly confident  in  her  capacity  to  take  care  of  herself. 

"  The  boys  will  let  you  alone  if  you  let  them  alone. 
Anyway  you  don't  have  to  be  flagging  'em  all  the  time. 
That's  just  going  after  trouble.  And  what's  the  use 
anyhow?"  she  contemptuously  thought  —  but  never 
said.     Nettie  was  loyal. 

Millie's  industrious  though  most  judicious  "  flag- 
ging "  ended  by  attracting  Jim  Marvin  among  others. 
Since  their  childish  days  together,  he  had  suffered  the 
intimacy  with  Nettie  to  lapse,  and  Nettie  herself  was 
without  arts  to  renew  it.     Now,  however,  he  would 


90  THE  NOON-MARK 

be  forever  turning  up,  answering  Millie's  oeillades 
from  a  distance,  sauntering  along,  ostentatiously 
whistling,  half  a  square  behind  the  girls.  He  pres- 
ently became  aware  of  a  piquant  contrast  between 
their  methods  of  meeting  his  advances;  and  to  the 
credit  of  his  taste,  found  Nettie's  directness,  her  fre- 
quent acerbities  quite  as  captivating  as  the  other  girl's 
calculated  feminine  appeal.  He  would  encounter 
Millie,  say,  at  Harmeyer's  waiting  for  the  soap  or  the 
sugar  or  the  can  of  baking-powder  to  be  wrapped  up, 
and  innocently  making  eyes  at  Mr.  Kraus,  the  butcher 
who  was  bald  and  old  enough  to  be  her  father,  in  the 
meanwhile.  "  Hello!"  Jim  would  say,  and  Millie 
would  respond  "  Hello !  "  with  a  certain  sweep  of  her 
eyelashes  which  had  proved  irresistible  in  numberless 
instances. 

"  What  you  think  you're  doing  here?  " 
"  Oh,  I'm  busy." 

"  Yeah,  you're  busy  —  I  don't  think !  " 
"  Why,  Jim  Marvin,  how  can  you  talk  so  to  me?  " 
"  l  Talk  so ! '  Listen  at  you !  I  ain't  saying  any- 
thing," Jim  declared  jeeringly  —  but  with  an  agree- 
able stirring  of  the  senses  at  the  same  time.  The  girl 
had  such  a  way  of  looking  at  him,  with  her  great 
dark  eyes,  as  if  his  least  word  mattered  more  to  her 
than  anything  in  the  world  —  as  if  she  would  remem- 
ber it,  think  about  it,  treasure  it  up  the  rest  of  her 
life!  All  the  while  he  too  saw  through  her;  but  the 
game  fascinated  him. 

"  Say,  want  to  get  weighed?  Come  on,  I'll  show 
you  how  to  beat  the  machine."  This  sprightly  feat 
was  accomplished  by  balancing  the  coin  in  the  slot, 
while  both  of  them  got  on  the  platform  together,  in 
tantalizingly  close  quarters;  and  before  it  was  well 


THE  NOON-MARK  91 

over,  Millie  skipped  off  with  a  flashing  glance,  but 
the  most  straightforward  of  words. 

"  Oh,  Jim,  was  I  standing  on  your  foot?  Oh,  par- 
don me!     I  didn't  mean  to — " 

"  Gee,  it  didn't  hurt !  "  Jim  mumbled,  in  an  inward 
flutter  that  surprised  himself;  it  was  delicious  and  at 
the  same  time  rather  discomfiting.  If  he  didn't  watch 
out,  he'd  be  treating  her  to  something  directly ! 

Nettie  Stieffel  set  in  motion  thrills  of  an  entirely 
different  character;  it  was  a  chase  and  capture  rather 
than  a  meeting.  Impossible  to  get  her  eye  as  she 
swung  along,  and  almost  impossible  to  catch  up  with 
her  if,  in  misjudged  caution,  he  allowed  her  too  much 
of  a  start.  Going  on  an  errand  or  to  and  from  school 
there  was  no  chance;  Nettie  was  too  intent  on  busi- 
ness. Besides,  there  was  that  McQuair  kid.  Jim 
was  a  year  or  so  older  than  the  McQuair  kid  whom, 
however,  he  knew  in  the  desultory  way  of  boys.  They 
had  been  in  swimming  together  when  their  respective 
gangs  would  go  down  to  the  sand-bar  on  the  opposite 
bank  of  the  river,  called  euphoniously  the  Queen  City 
Bathing  Beach ;  and  once  in  a  while  they  encountered 
around  the  dumps.  But  Jim  had  taken  no  interest 
friendly  or  hostile,  in  the  other  boy,  until  he  observed 
Randy  squiring  Nettie  about,  a  spectacle  which  young 
Mr.  Marvin  viewed  with  strong  disfavor,  why  he  could 
not  have  told.  He  was  not  exactly  jealous;  Nettie 
gave  him  no  cause  to  be  by  exceptional  graciousness 
to  Randon,  at  any  rate;  never  was  any  Corydon 
treated  more  cavalierly.  Yet  the  older  boy,  for  all  his 
braggart's  self-confidence,  divined  uneasily  that  Ran- 
don had  in  some  ways  the  advantage  of  him.  At  bot- 
tom, the  feeling  was  not  personal ;  rather  was  it  the 
ancient   class-distrust,   class-enmity   asserting  itself, 


92  THE  NOON-MARK 

and  very  likely  Jim  would  have  disliked  any  boy  who 
had  Randon's  pocket-money,  his  rifle,  his  bicycle,  who 
lived  in  a  big  house,  went  away  in  the  summers,  be- 
longed emphatically  to  what  Jim  had  heard  his 
father's  associates  call  unpleasantly  the  "  silk-stock- 
ing crowd."  The  sentimental  situation  aroused  all 
his  dog-in-the-manger  instincts;  and  the  worst  of  it 
was  that  he  could  not  always  gauge  Nettie ;  he  made 
the  mistake  of  negligently  denouncing  Randon  to  her 
for  a  sissy,  a  statement  in  which  Millie  Aymar  would 
have  obligingly  concurred,  and  was  well-nigh  dumb- 
founded at  the  savagery  with  which  she  turned  on  him. 

"He  is  not,  Jim  Marvin!  There  ain't  anything 
sissy  about  him !  I  s'pose  you  think  it's  sissy  for  him 
to  take  off  his  hat  when  he  sees  a  girl.  Well,  I  don't! 
I  think  it's  nice  manners,  that's  what  /  think !  " 

"  Aw,  you're  stuck  on  him  — " 

"  Well,  you're  good  and  stuck  on  yourself !  "  re- 
torted Nettie  at  a  white  heat.  Randon  had  never 
said  a  word  to  her  in  defamation  of  any  other  boy; 
and  this  fact  taken  with  the  girl's  unsparing  sense 
of  justice  provoked  comparisons  not  altogether  favor- 
able to  Mr.  Marvin.  "  He  ain't  a  sissy  any  such  a 
thing!"  she  reiterated,  secure  in  her  own  judgment, 
as  always.  She  had  never  seen  Randon  in  circum- 
stances to  prove  his  mettle,  but  that  made  no  differ- 
ence ;  Nettie  knew  that  he  was  no  sissy. 

As  it  happened,  the  test  was  presently  applied. 
Mrs.  McQuair,  upstairs  in  her  room  one  afternoon, 
was  making  ready  for  a  visit  from  young  Peabody  on 
business  connected  with  the  Peabody  Tool  Works  pre- 
ferred stock  which  she  had  owned  and  never  received 
a  cent  of  dividend  from  these  twenty  years,  when  she 
heard  an  unholy  clamor  somewhere  about  the  prem- 


THE  NOON-MARK  93 

ises,  squeals  and  squawkings,  a  violent  discbarge  of 
water  from  the  garden-hose,  the  cook's  voice  raised  in 
scandalized  protest.  It  mounted  momentarily  in 
volume.     Mrs.  McQuair  went  to  her  window. 

What  she  saw  caused  her  to  ejaculate  "  Mercy !  " 
and  make  a  movement  to  raise  the  sash  and  put  her 
head  out ;  but  she  arrested  herself  in  the  same  instant. 
Shouting  orders  or  reprimands  from  a  second-story 
window  was  not  a  proceeding  countenanced  by  the 
Victorian  gentility  of  which  Mrs.  McQuair  was  an  ex- 
ponent. Instead  she  went  downstairs,  through  the 
house  and  the  kitchen,  quick  yet  composed,  instinct 
with  the  inimitable  polite  authority  of  her  caste. 
"Ellen!  Katie!  What  is  the  matter?  What  are 
the  boys  fighting  about?  " 

Conclamant  explanations  filled  the  air.  That  big 
boy  had  come  in  the  garden  and  turned  the  hose  on 
the  rabbits  in  their  pen  —  Mr.  Randon's  rabbits  that 
he  thought  so  much  of  — and  Mr.  Randon  spoke  to 
him,  and  he  used  such  words,  Mrs.  McQuair  —  the  boy, 
not  Mr.  Randon  —  honestly,  they'd  heard  language 
but  never  the  like  of  them  words  he  used,  and  him  a 
real  young  boy  too,  and  he  was  one  of  them  tough  boys 
from  that  tough  neighborhood,  North  Maplehurst,  out 
that  way  —  and  then  Mr.  Randon  hit  him  —  and  my 
God,  Ellen,  you  wouldn't  blame  him !  —  Right  before 
them  two  little  girls  —  well,  one  of  'em  was  eggin'  'em 
on,  looked  like  — Oh,  I  wouldn't  say  that  either, 
Katie  —  They're  an  awful  tough  bunch,  all  of  'em  — 
Stop  'em,  is  it?     How're  you  going  to  stop  'em  —  ? 

How  indeed?  Perhaps  Ellen  and  Katie,  both  of 
whom  came  of  a  race  whose  taste  for  warfare  is  justly 
celebrated,  were  at  heart  not  over  anxious  to  stop  'em. 
The  boys  were  pummelling  each  other  in  sincere  ani- 


94  THE  NOON-MAKK 

mosity,  Eandon  rather  getting  the  worst  of  it,  but 
gamely  holding  on;  no  science  was  displayed  and  no 
rules  observed ;  kicks  and  punches  were  delivered  any- 
how and  landed  anywhere.  It  was  a  combat  to  rouse 
the  late  Marquis  of  Queensberry  from  his  coffin;  it 
was  worthy  to  rank  with  the  great  fight  between  Slog- 
ger  Williams  and  Tom  Brown,  the  other  great  fight 
between  Cuff  and  Dobbin,  the  less  known  but  equally 
ferocious  encounter  of  Berry  and  Biggs  —  all  the 
heroic  episodes  of  history  and  fiction!  The  women 
beheld  the  wild  scene,  helpless ;  one  of  the  little  girls, 
a  very  pretty  little  girl,  as  Mrs.  McQuair  automatically 
noted,  came  running  to  that  lady  with  cries  of  terror 
and  hid  her  face  against  her  skirts,  her  whole  graceful 
body  trembling  hysterically.  It  was  touching,  it  was 
charming,  the  childish  appeal.  The  other  little  girl, 
with  a  white  face  and  black  eyes  blazing,  dashed  over 
to  the  hose  which  was  lying  there  with  a  driblet  of 
water  still  seeping  away  from  the  nozzle,  and  snatched 
it  up  and  directed  it  upon  the  combatants !  "  Turn 
it  on  some  more!  Turn  it  on,  can't  you?"  she 
screeched  at  the  stupefied  onlookers,  and  stamped  her 
foot  in  a  frenzy  of  impatience  at  their  inactivity. 
"  Turn  it  on,  I  tell  you !  Oh,  my  lordy,  ain't  anybody 
got  any  sense?  Here,  lemme  then!  Where's  the 
hydrant?"  With  unimaginable,  with  incredible  de- 
spatch she  propped  the  hose  on  a  haphazard  brickbat, 
and  flew  to  the  faucet.  She  would  have  had  the  field 
of  battle  deluged,  with  what  results  none  can  tell,  had 
not  Mr.  James  Peabody  strode  around  the  corner  of 
the  house  at  that  precise  second. 

He  afterwards  accounted  for  this  extremely  oppor- 
tune arrival  by  revealing  the  fact  that,  coming  punct- 
ually to  his  appointment,  he  had  stood  in  the  vestibule 


THE  NOON-MARK  95 

ringing  repeatedly  for  two  or  three  minutes  without 
response,  and  had  thereupon  decided  to  apply  at  the 
back  on  the  supposition  that  something  had  happened 
to  take  everybody  out  of  doors  or  out  of  hearing  some- 
how. The  racket  was  abundantly  audible,  but  he  had 
not  paid  much  attention  to  it,  or  connected  it  with 
Mrs.  McQuair's  household.  Under  these  circum- 
stances the  promptness  with  which  he  grasped  the 
situation,  the  supreme  efficiency  of  his  method  of 
dealing  with  it  justified  the  reputation  of  his  later 
years  when  those  qualities  had  become  his  best-known 
characteristics;  he  never  gave  more  conclusive  proof 
of  possessing  them.  He  marched  up  to  the  two  boys 
without  any  by-your-leaves  or  with-your-leaves, 
plucked  them  apart  with  a  single  muscular  effort  — 
James  was  a  stocky,  well-built  young  fellow  in  those 
days  —  and  sent  them  spinning,  one  to  this  side,  one 
to  that,  each  with  a  peculiar  sensation  of  somebody's 
elbow,  knee  or  fist  unkindly  introduced  between  his 
ribs,  behind  his  ear,  in  the  small  of  his  back !  It  was 
miraculous ;  he  seemed  to  them  to  be  all  elbows,  knees, 
and  tough,  expert  fists.  The  tumult  and  the  shouting 
died.  The  boys  stood  gasping,  dishevelled,  bloody; 
Nettie  with  her  hand  on  the  faucet,  gazed  in  stark 
admiration,  second  only  to  that  of  the  two  Hibernian 
ladies;  Mrs.  McQuair  was  seized  with  nervous  laugh- 
ter in  the  middle  of  an  apologetic  speech.  "  Mr.  Pea- 
body,  I  —  really  —  I  —  you  — " 

"  Now,  look  here,  you  boys/'  said  Mr.  Peabody, 
tightening  his  tie;  "  if  you  want  to  fight,  you  ought  to 
go  somewhere  and  fight  decently.  That  gouging  each 
other's  eyes  and  rolling  around  in  the  dirt  —  that's 
no  way  to  do  — " 

"  He  began  it,  he  began  it !  "  protested  Jim,  in  some- 


96  THE  NOON-MARK 

thing  between  a  snarl  and  a  whine ;  "  I  wasn't  doing 
nothing  — " 

"That's  a  lie,  you  weren't  doing  anything!  He 
called  me  —  he  called  me  — " 

"  Randon !     Randon  — !  " 

"  Begobs,  if  it  was  me,  I'd  scrub  the  mouths  of  the 
two  of  'em,  that  I  would !  "  remarked  Ellen  dispassion- 
ately. 

"Mister,  mister!  Say,  mister!"  Nettie  screamed 
an  ear-piercing  statement :  "  He  threw  water  on  the 
rabbits  and  they  ain't  his  rabbits !  Didn't  he  throw 
water  on  the  rabbits,  Millie?  You  did  so,  Jim  Mar- 
vin, you  did  so  throw  water  on  the  rabbits  — !  " 

Mr.  Peabody's  heavy  masculine  voice  came  down  on 
the  reviving  brawl  like  a  stone.  "  Which  of  you  boys 
belongs  here?  Is  that  your  boy,  Mrs.  McQuair? 
Well  then,  you  clear  out!  Hey?  Oh  yes,  you  will, 
son ! "  And  Jim  accepting  some  further  invitation 
not  too  gently  issued,  and  clearing  out,  Mr.  Peabody 
returned  to  the  lady  of  the  house,  taking  off  his  hat, 
smiling  cheerfully  and  reassuringly.  His  face  was 
rather  pleasant  when  he  smiled ;  in  repose,  it  was  al- 
ready mapped  faintly  with  harsh  lines,  although  he 
was  not  over  thirty  years  old.  "  Better  go  bathe  that 
eye,"  he  advised  Randon.  "  Oh  no,  it's  all  right, 
Mrs.  McQuair.  It'll  look  pretty  bum,  and  feel  so  too 
for  a  few  days,  but  it's  not  really  injured.  Boys  are 
eternally  getting  into  scraps  and  getting  mauled  up, 
you  know  — " 

"  Yah,  it  don't  hurt!  He  couldn't  hurt  me!  "  said 
Randon,  fiercely.  "I  could  lick  him  easy  —  I  was 
licking  him  — " 

"Aw,  you!  You  weren't  licking  him!  You 
couldn't  to  save  you!     What  you  telling  that  boob 


THE  NOON-MARK  97 

story  for?"  said  Nettie  with  scorn.  "I'd  have 
stopped  'em,  if  you  hadn't  of  come,  mister.  I  was  go- 
ine  to  turn  the  hose  on  'em.  I  bet  that  would  have 
made  'em  quit !  " 

"I  bet  it  would  too!  That's  quite  an  idea!  "  Mr. 
Peabody  agreed,  eyeing  her  openly  amused. 

Millie,  still  clinging  prettily  to  Mrs.  McQuair's 
skirt,  spoke  for  the  first  time,  raising  eyes  of  shy  ador- 
ation to  his  face.  "  Oh  my,  mister,  I  think  you're  just 
wonderful!  You're  so  strong!  Oh,  my,  I'm  so  glad 
you  came ! " 

The  young  man  actually  blushed  before  that  caress- 
ing little  voice,  that  soft  caressing  look  —  blushed  and 
fixed  his  tie  again!  Afterwards  he  asked  Mrs.  Mc- 
Quair  if  she  had  happened  to  notice  how  extraordi- 
narily pretty  those  two  children  were,  particularly 
that  little  thing  with  the  dimple  —  the  one  that 
seemed  so  frightened? 


V 

ACCORDING  to  tradition,  that  vicious  set-to 
between  Randon  and  the  Marvin  boy  ought 
to  have  laid  the  foundations  of  an  enduring 
friendship;  we  have  it  on  the  authority  of  countless 
novelists  and  historians  that  nothing  is  so  sure  to 
engender  mutual  regard  as  a  good,  brisk,  sanguinary 
trial  of  physical  strength.  But  in  this  case,  nothing 
of  the  sort  followed.  Jim  and  Randon  went  their 
divergent  ways  thereafter  liking  each  other  no  better, 
though  without  an  augmented  dislike.  The  episode 
did  not  loom  nearly  so  large  in  their  view  as  an  out- 
sider might  have  imagined ;  if  it  did  not  go  out  of  their 
minds  altogether,  they  remembered  it  only  with  a 
humorous  indifference.  One  fight  more  or  less  fig- 
ured inconsiderably  in  Jim's  catalogue,  and  the  other 
lad,  though  not  naturally  quarrelsome,  had  been 
obliged  to  stand  up  for  himself  and  give  and  take 
blows  in  earnest  before.  For  the  rest,  as  has  been 
hinted,  their  lives  were  so  conditioned  as  to  bring  them 
into  contact  very  seldom.  Jim  went  to  work  a  few 
months  later;  and  at  about  the  same  date,  Randon 
was  sent  off  to  the  eastern  preparatory  school  whence 
he  was  gradually  translated  to  college;  in  all  he  was 
seven  or  eight  years  away  from  home. 

He  shot  up  weedily  during  this  time.  From  one 
vacation  to  another,  the  family  would  exclaim  at  his 
changed  looks  whereas  to  him  they  all  seemed  change- 
less.    When  he  came  home,  the  old  house  on  the  hill 

98 


THE  NOON-MARK  99 

was  always  the  same,  his  Mrs.  McQuair  was  always 
the  same,  both  of  them  seemly  and  well-ordered  as  on 
the  day  he  first  saw  them ;  old  then,  they  apparently 
did  not  grow  an  hour  older  all  this  while.  Sometimes 
he  would  spend  a  part  of  the  holidays  with  the  other 
relatives  in  one  of  those  handsome,  stable  houses  of 
his  eight-year-old  recollections;  these  likewise  re- 
mained just  as  handsome  and  stable  as  ever,  and  the 
Aunt  Dorothys,  the  Cousin  Johns  were  leading 
the  same  heavily  upholstered  lives,  and  greeted 
him,  season  after  season,  in  very  much  the  same 
style  —  except  that  nowadays  they  presented  him 
to  strangers  more  often  as  "  poor  Aleck's  boy " 
than  as  "  poor  Louise's,"  and  there  was  less  kissing 
than  there  used  to  be.  A  gawky  young  gentleman  of 
seventeen  with  an  indeterminate  voice  and  sadly  af- 
flicted complexion  is  not  a  good  subject  for  endear- 
ments. From  time  to  time  there  would  be  a  gap  in 
one  of  the  households;  somebody  else  had  joined  those 
ranks  whereof  the  members  were  always  "  poor." 
Randon  dutifully  tried  his  best  to  feel  sorry;  but  in 
truth  the  death,  even  of  his  own  father,  did  not  touch 
him  very  deeply.  He  was  not  heartless  or  self-cen- 
tered ;  he  was  only  young. 

The  cousins  of  his  own  age  were  growing  up  too,  a 
phenomenon  of  no  especial  interest  in  the  case  of  the 
other  boys  as  compared,  that  is,  with  the  truly  re- 
markable circumstances  that  attended  it  amongst  the 
girls.  Between  visits  one  of  them  would  change  from 
a  neat,  trim  little  sprite  playing  with  dolls  and  jack- 
stones  to  a  weird  creature  all  sprawling  legs  and 
arms  and  wide,  flat  waist.  Later  on,  in  connection 
with  a  new  shapeliness  the  aspect  of  which  threw  the 
senses  into  an  agreeable  commotion,  they  developed 


100  THE  NOON-MARK 

extraordinary  airs  of  age  and  wisdom  —  extraordi- 
nary and  convincing.  At  eighteen,  Randon  felt  him- 
self a  lout  in  the  presence  of  these  superior,  skirted 
beings  who,  nevertheless,  were  scarcely  a  day  older 
than  he;  in  conscience  their  knowledge  of  the  world 
must  have  been  even  more  limited  than  his,  their  out- 
look on  life  as  circumscribed,  other  lads  sagaciously 
pointed  out  to  him,  but  Randon  put  no  faith  in  these 
deductions.  He  took  the  girls  at  their  face  value,  in 
helpless  and  admiring  awe. 

That  phase  passed,  of  course.  Presently  Mr.  Mc- 
Quair  had  evening-clothes  —  to  mention  only  one  item 
of  a  wardrobe  selected  with  the  painful  care  of  youth 
—  and  was  going  out  to  parties  and  dancing  it  was 
reported  very  well  indeed,  and  gallantly  providing 
flowers,  candy,  theater-tickets  and  what-not ;  and  pres- 
ently also,  no  doubt,  he  was  sheepishly  smiling  on  and 
being  smiled  upon  in  return,  and  exchanging  more 
or  less  mushy  murmurings  with  a  succession  of  those 
erstwhile  formidable  divinities.  The  young  fellow 
was  fairly  good-looking  —  nice-looking  the  girls  pro- 
nounced him;  and  their  mammas  and  all  the  older 
women  were  unanimous  that  his  manners  were  charm- 
ing. Whether  a  Victorian  coloring  had  been  uncon- 
sciously imparted  to  his  upbringing  by  Mrs.  McQuair, 
or  whether  a  certain  shy  chivalric  gentleness  and  rev- 
erence for  the  other  sex  were  native  to  him,  one  might 
choose ;  but  there  was  at  least  no  flourish  about  Ran- 
dy's courtesies  which  were  invariably  in  good  taste 
and  had  the  air  of  being  spontaneous. 

Leaving  college,  he  went  into  Judge  Stanley's  office, 
having  elected  to  follow  the  legal  profession,  greatly 
to  Mrs.  McQuair's  satisfaction,  though  the  old  lady 
was  by  far  too  tactful  to  make  much  of  a  to-do  about 


THE  NOdNolftARE:  101 

it.     Outside  of  the  professions,  law,  physic,  divinity 
and  so  on,  the  only  career  suitable  for  a  gentleman 
was  that  of  banking,  according  to  her  antique  stand- 
ards; though  she  was  capable  of  laughing  at  herself 
for  clinging  to  them  in  a  country  and  an  age  of  com- 
mercial kings,  who  are  also  not  infrequently  gentle- 
men,  all   rumors   to   the   contrary   notwithstanding. 
One  of  the  collateral  McQuairs  was  "  in  steel,"  and 
one,  alas  for  standards,  managed  a  large  concern  for 
the  manufacture  of  washing-machines ;  but  in  Randy's 
direct  ancestry  there  was  no  taint  of  trade.     Now  in 
her  mind's  eye  she  saw  him  Judge  McQuair,  Attorney- 
General  McQuair,  Chief  Justice  McQuair  at  something 
less  than  thirty  years  old,  very  likely.     Perhaps  Ran- 
don  himself  had  some  such  visions;  he  would  eat  a 
camel  for  luncheon !     In  the  meanwhile,  there  was  no 
pinch  of  means.     He  had  some  property,  and  would 
inherit  more;  to  be  just,  the  young  man  averted  his 
mind  from  this  latter  prospect.     He  was  sincerely 
fond  of  Mrs.  McQuair  whom  he  considered  the  finest 
of  gentlewomen,  and  the  brightest. 

"  I'm  never  going  to  get  married  until  I  find  some- 
one like  yon/'  he  told  her  once,  reddening  like  a  girl, 
ingenuously  honest. 

Mrs.  McQuair  looked  at  him  pleased,  touched, 
amused.  "  Why,  Randon,  I  wonder  if  you  know  that 
that  is  the  very  nicest  thing  you  could  say  to  me!  '" 

"  I'm  saying  it  because  I  mean  it.  You  know  I 
wouldn't  say  it  just  to  be  nice,"  he  said  reproachfully. 
"  Trouble  is,  when  I  do  find  her,  ten  to  one  she  won't 

have  me !  " 

They  both  laughed ;  but  Mrs.  McQuair  remarked  to 
herself  that  if  Randon  looked  and  talked  and  acted 
like  that  when  the  only  girl  was  found,  it  was  unthink- 


10^  •  THE  NOON-MARE 

able  that  she  should  resist  him.  "  Perhaps  I'm  only  a 
silly  old  woman,  though,  thinking  he's  the  most  won- 
derful boy  in  creation,"  she  warned  herself  with  a  sigh. 
Judge  Stanley's  office  was  in  the  MaeDonald  Build- 
ing on  Fourth,  opposite  the  new  Travelers'  And  Trad- 
ers' Bank,  the  same  bank  that  used  to  be  a  good  way 
farther  down  town  at  the  corner  of  Orchard  Street. 
That  location  had  ceased  some  time  before  to  be 
favored  by  banking  institutions ;  they  all  moved  "  up  " 
in  the  train  of  the  theater  and  shopping  districts,  the 
hotels  and  clubs  and  automobile  salesrooms,  which 
themselves  were  forever  moving  "  up  "  obedient  to 
the  autocratic  demands  of  American  restlessness, 
American  enterprise.  When  all  is  said,  it  is  a  whole- 
some enough  manifestation;  the  changes  are  invar- 
iably for  the  better.  The  new  Travelers'  And  Trad- 
ers', for  example,  was  a  splendid,  solid,  fireproof 
structure,  with  vast  areas  of  priceless  space  given  up 
to  mere  beauty  and  convenience,  things  which  the  pre- 
ceding generation  never  considered.  Mammon  had  a 
mighty  dirty,  disordered  and  comfortless  temple  in 
our  forefathers'  day,  ill-heated,  ill-lighted,  ill-venti- 
lated; but  we  have  changed  all  that.  We  have  even 
made  far-reaching  and  revolutionary  changes  in 
Mammon's  staff  of  attendants,  so  that,  in  place  of  the 
shirtsleeves,  green  eyeshades,  preposterous  whiskers, 
derby  hats  and  watch-chains  with  which  old  Hector 
McQuair,  let  us  say,  must  have  been  familiar  back  in 
1870,  his  grandson  now  beheld  flowing  to  and  from 
the  bank  three  times  a  day  a  rustling  tide  of  skirts, 
crested  with  flippant  feminine  headgear.  High  heels 
clicked,  audacious  travesties  or  translations  of  mas- 
culine attire  amused  and  allured  indefinably.  It  was 
a  pleasing  spectacle,  even  to  those  pessimists  who  de- 


THE  NOON-MARK  103 

plored  the  feminization  of  business,  refusing  to  be 
consoled  when  optimists  called  attention  to  the  fact 
that  the  girls  were  not  entrusted  with  the  big,  import- 
ant positions,  and  in  their  small,  obscure  ones  were 
uniformly  as  efficient  as  the  average  male  clerk  and 
likely  to  be  more  honest. 

"  They  haven't  the  temptations  and  the  opportuni- 
ties to  go  wrong  that  a  man  has.  They  stay  home 
nights,  and  they  don't  drink,  or  play  the  races,  or  rush 
some  girl,  or  go  crazy  over  get-rich-quick  speculations. 
No  reason  why  a  smart,  level-headed  girl  shouldn't 
make  good  in  a  bank  or  any  other  job  same  as  a  man," 
said  Mr.  James  Peabody.  He  was  on  the  Travelers' 
And  Traders'  board  of  directors;  and  it  may  be  re- 
marked that,  notwithstanding  this  valorous  taking  up 
of  the  cudgels  on  behalf  of  business-women,  Mr.  Pea- 
body  like  almost  all  the  other  optimists  never  be- 
stowed any  notice  on  the  bank's  galaxy  of  girl  workers 
other  than  such  as  he  would  have  on  one  of  his  own 
machine-tools;  it  was  the  pessimists  who  were  most 
interested. 

Pessimists  and  some  others  who  did  not  come  under 
either  head.  The  MacDonald  Building  housed  the 
offices  of  the  Ohio  Valley  and  Western  Railroad  sys- 
tem on  its  first  floor  where  the  shirtsleeves  had  it  all 
their  own  way  undisputed  by  the  shirtwaists ;  nobody 
ever  saw  a  young  woman  in  a  railroad  office.  Above 
them  the  twelve  or  fifteen  successive  stories  were 
mostly  given  over  to  brokers  and  attorneys ;  the  city 
office  of  the  Peabody  Tool  Works  took  up  one  of  the 
largest  suites.  As  it  happened  there  were  very  few 
women  stenographers  or  clerks  in  the  building;  and 
naturally  it  was  quite  impossible  for  the  male  popula- 
tion when  it  looked  out  of  the  front  windows  to  avoid 


104  THE  NOON-MARK 

looking  at  the  front  windows  of  the  Travelers'  And 
Traders'.  None  of  them  avoided  looking,  at  any  rate, 
not  even  that  well-mannered  youth,  Mr.  Randon  Mc- 
Quair.  He  as  well  as  the  rest  was  familiar  by  sight 
with  the  red-haired  girl  whose  head  showed  like  a 
torch  in  the  farthest  recesses  of  one  room ;  with  the 
rigid,  middle-aged  one  in  black  who  pounded  all  day 
long  on  some  sort  of  adding-machine;  with  the  fat 
little  thing  that  daily  brought  tit-bits  to  the  bank  cat ; 
with  a  score  of  others  whom  he  could  identify  on  the 
street,  too,  unless  their  hats  defeated  him.  Numbers 
of  them  brought  lunches,  an  apple  and  a  couple  of 
cookies,  a  bar  of  chocolate  and  a  sandwich,  and  were 
to  be  seen  nibbling  at  the  noon-hour,  perched  on  stools 
and  window-sills ;  others  went  down  to  the  Dairy  Tea- 
Room  in  the  basement  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
or  to  the  Womens'  Exchange,  or  the  Kentucky  Kitch- 
en; and  in  the  course  of  some  experimental  journeys 
to  these  places  of  refreshment,  Randon  one  day  caught 
sight  at  a  distance  of  a  tall,  slender,  striking  young 
woman  whom  he  recognized  with  an  inward  start,  and 
an  odd  kind  of  shamed  interest.  He  had  not  seen  her 
for  four  or  five  years,  and  realized  that  he  was  on 
the  way  to  forgetting  her,  might  even  have  passed  her 
close  on  the  street,  oblivious  —  a  proceeding  which 
savored  unpleasantly  to  him  of  snobbishness.  How- 
ever, he  was  diffident  enough  to  console  himself  with 
the  reflection  that  she  herself  might  not  improbably 
have  forgotten  him;  but  meeting  his  eye  across  the 
Dairy  she  nodded,  sparkling,  and  Randon  felt  dispro- 
portionately relieved  and  pi  eased.  The  young  man 
with  him  inquired  with  every  mark  of  appreciation 
who  she  was? 

"  Girl  I  used  to  play  round  with,"  said  Randon,  un- 


THE  NOON-MARK  105 

successfully  attempting  an  indifferent  tone.  "  I 
haven't  seen  her  in  I  don't  know  how  long,  though  — 
not  since  niy  freshman  year,  I  believe  She  lived  in 
that  little  Maplehurst  settlement  just  back  of  our 
house,  you  know?  " 

"Oh!"  said  the  other  to  whom  this  information, 
sketchy  as  it  may  appear,  was  amply  illuminating. 
"  Oh!  Well,  she's  a  queen,  anyhow  !  "  He  continued 
to  glance  that  way  from  time  to  time  after  a  fashion 
which  Randon  found  singularly  unbecoming. 

"  Here,  you  better  cut  that  out,  that  staring.  She 
won't  like  it,"  he  remonstrated. 

"  Ho,  she  won't,  won't  she?  It's  all  in  the  way  you 
do  it.  You  take  a  good  look  and  keep  on  looking  till 
she  catches  you.  Then  you  kind  of  jerk  yourself  up, 
awfully  ashamed.  You're  a  gentleman,  you  know  — 
you've  just  realized  what  you  were  doing  —  you're 
mortified,  but  you  simply  couldn't  help  it,  she's  so 
et  cetera,  et  cetera!  And  then,  when  she  turns  her 
head  away,  you  begin  all  over  again !  "  his  companion 
expounded,  illustrating. 

"  That  won't  get  you  anywhere  with  this  girl  —  not 
if  she's  like  what  she  used  to  be,  that  is,"  said  Randon ; 
and  presently  Nettie  bore  him  out  by  ignoring  the 
other's  demonstrations  in  a  manner  that  defeated  by 
stark  simplicity.  It  was  discomfitingly  obvious  that 
she  did  not  know  what  he  was  about  and,  worse  still, 
did  not  care;  he  might  stare  his  eyes  out,  it  was 
nothing  to  Nettie.  The  waitress  brought  her  order, 
a  glass  of  milk,  a  little  platter  of  frizzled  chip-beef, 
and  a  triangle  of  apple-pie  upon  which  she  fell  to  at 
once,  hearty  and  unconcerned  and  in  a  rather  ungrace- 
ful hurry ;  they  were  allowed  an  hour  for  luncheon  by 
the  bank,  but  she  wanted  to  get  through  and  go  over 


106  THE  NOON-MARK 

to  Sheen  and  Sawyer's  to  look  at  their  advertised 
bargains  in  underwear. 

It  was  worthy  of  note,  perhaps,  that  even  at  this 
early  date  she  had  the  specific  air  of  the  worker.  She 
was  too  young  and  vigorous  to  look  jaded  after  the 
office  day,  she  had  not  yet  acquired  the  clerical  stoop 
and  glasses,  and  she  possessed  some  exquisite  secret 
of  cleanliness,  daintiness,  ineffable  style  that  many 
another  girl  envied  her ;  yet  Randon  never  questioned 
her  being  employed  in  some  capacity  somewhere ;  she 
looked  it  all  over,  in  every  movement.  He  wondered 
that  he  had  never  encountered  her  before,  on  the 
street  cars  or  elsewhere  in  the  hours  when  they  would 
be  going  to  their  respective  employment.  He  won- 
dered, too,  since  she  remembered  him,  if  she  also  re- 
membered certain  sentimental  passages  of  their  'teens, 
and  himself  blushed  and  laughed  over  the  recollection 
that  they  were  sentimental  only  on  his  side.  Nettie 
never  responded  in  kind,  although  he  was  sure  she  did 
not  dislike  him.  He  recalled  having  cut  his  hand 
badly  one  day  in  some  boyish  fooling  with  scraps  of 
glass  on  the  dumps,  and  how  she  had  rushed  him  to 
the  Stieffel  kitchen  and  washed  and  bound  up  the 
wound  which  bled  abhorrently,  and  treated  it  with 
stinging  applications  of  antiseptic  in  a  characteristi- 
cally thorough  way;  and  how  she  had  worried  over 
him  and  mothered  him  to  his  alternate  delight  and 
confusion  for  days  afterward,  until  the  cut  began  to 
heal.  She  was  a  queer  mixture,  he  thought  with  a 
reminiscent  smile  and  a  growing  curiosity  as  to 
whether  she  was  queer  still.  She  was  as  pretty  as 
ever,  no  two  judgments  about  that;  and  by  Something, 
he  had  shown  first-class  taste  as  a  boy ! 

"  What  has  become  of  that  Stieffel  family  that  used 


THE  NOON-MARK  107 

to  live  over  on  the  other  side  of  the  dumps  —  of  the 
place  whore  the  dumps  used  to  be,  I  mean,  before  they 
built  the  garages  and  the  automobile  repair-shop 
there?  "  ho  inquired  craftily  that  evening,  striving  all 
the  while  to  persuade  himself  that  the  question  was 
prompted  by  the  merest  idle  interest.  "  That  funny, 
dilapidated  Miss  Stieffel,  the  one  that  sometimes  made 
your  clothes,  is  she  around  still?  " 

"  Oh  yes,  haven't  you  seen  her?  You  haven't  been 
home  much,  though,  until  this  last  year.  Oh  yes,  she 
comes  to  me  regularly,"  Mrs.  McQuair  answered,  her 
hands  meanwhile  moving  deftly  over  the  coffee-tray; 
they  had  got  to  be  a  little  bony  and  veiny  of  late,  but 
were  still  fine,  delicate  hands  —  a  gentlewoman's 
hands.  "  I  think  they've  had  a  rather  hard  time. 
Poor  Miss  Stieffel  is  a  good  deal  of  a  talker,  you  know, 
and  I  suppose  she  considers  me  a  safe  person  to  con- 
fide in ;  she's  always  been  embarrassingly  frank  about 
their  affairs.  The  father  had  a  position  in  one  of 
the  banks  and  they  got  along  well  enough  until  he 
had  a  stroke  or  something,  two  or  three  years  ago,  and 
he  hasn't  been  able  to  work  since.  It  does  seem  so 
unjust  that  a  good,  hardworking  man  should  be  so 
afflicted  while  dozens  of  scallawags  are  allowed  to  go 
around,  perfectly  sound  and  active,  making  trouble ! ,; 

"  Can't  he  do  anything  at  all?  " 

"  No.  I  believe  his  mind  is  all  right,  but  he  can't 
get  about.  He  has  to  stay  at  home  in  a  wheel-chair. 
Miss  Stieffel  told  me  he  could  do  little  things  like 
peeling  vegetables  and  washing  the  dishes;  he  pushes 
the  chair  around  by  taking  hold  of  the  wheels,  and 
helps  himself  all  he  can,  she  says.  They  have  that 
old  chair  that  was  your  grandfather's.  I  sold  it  to 
them  — " 


108  THE  NOON-MARK 

"Sold  it?  That  tumbledown  old  chair  —  ?"  Ran- 
dou  ejaculated.  The  young  fellow  was  true  to  his 
traditions;  that  Mrs.  McQuair  or  any  other  woman 
of  his  family  should  descend  to  selling  anything,  let 
alone  anything  like  second-hand  furniture,  really 
shocked  him.  And  to  these  poor,  unfortunate  peo- 
ple — !  The  old  lady  understood  on  the  instant  and 
checked  his  protest  with  a  gesture. 

"  Miss  Stieffel  asked  me  what  I  would  sell  it  for, 
and  I  told  her  five  dollars.  I  had  to,  Randon,  to 
save  her  pride.  You  can't  make  objects  of  charity 
out  of  people  like  the  Stieffels;  you  can't  giye  them 
things  and  help  them.  You'd  only  wound  them  ter- 
ribly.    That's  what  makes  it  so  pitiful." 

"  That's  so,"  said  Randon,  soberly. 

"  She  insisted  on  working  out  the  five  dollars,"  said 
Mrs.  McQuair.  "  I  daresay  that  was  really  easier  for 
her,  than  to  find  the  ready  money.  They  must  have 
had  monumental  bills  for  doctors  and  medicines  and 
everything."  She  sighed.  "  The  whole  thing  was 
very  painful.  Some  of  the  Stieffel  children  came  up 
and  got  the  chair  and  wheeled  it  home  along  the 
street,  taking  turns  riding.  Miss  Stieffel  told  me 
afterwards  that  Nettie  —  that's  the  oldest  girl,  I 
think  —  scrubbed  it  all  up,  and  painted  it  white  and 
they  got  some  '  art '  denim  and  re-covered  the  old 
cushions.  She  said  it  looked  '  lovely  ' —  Randon,  I 
could  have  cried !  " 

Randon  listened  with  his  usual  prideful  admira- 
tion, thinking  what  a  great  lady  she  was  with  her 
sympathetic  and  intelligent  humanity.  But  at  the 
same  moment  the  disquieting  consciousness  visited 
him  that  this  sad  and  shabby  episode  of  the  wheel- 
chair, and  the  poor,  broken-down  father  peeling  pota- 


THE  NOON-MARK  109 

toes  in  it,  somehow  removed  Nettie  Stieffel  from  him ; 
he  said  to  himself  with  a  vexation  which  he  suspected 
of  being  absurd  that  he  wished  it  had  been  somebody 
else's  wheel-chair  that  they  had  bought! 

"  The  two  older  girls  have  positions  in  the  same 
bank  where  their  father  was.  Mr.  Peabody  got  them 
in  there;  and  of  course,  considering  Mr.  Stieffel's  long 
service  in  that  one  place  —  I  think  Miss  Steiffel  told 
me  he  had  been  there  twenty -five  years  —  the  bank- 
people  did  something  for  him,  got  up  a  little  purse,  or 
something.  Mr.  Peabody  was  at  the  bottom  of  that, 
too,  I  feel  pretty  sure,  though  he  hasn't  let  it  be 
known.  He's  a  very  fine  man,  Randon;  everybody 
says  so.  There's  a  Stieffel  boy,  too,  that  is  old  enough 
to  work  now.  And  as  for  poor  Miss  Julia,  work  is 
nothing  new  to  her;  she's  always  been  the  mainstay 
of  the  family.  Altogether,  they  manage  to  get  along," 
said  Mrs.  Hector,  and  sighed  again.  "But,  mercy 
on  us,  Randon,  what  lives  some  people  lead ! " 

It  did  not  take  Randon  long  to  expand  the  above  in- 
formation by  several  items  which  for  some  reason,  the 
young  man  did  not  deem  it  necessary  to  impart  to 
Mrs.  McQuair.  After  all,  why  should  he?  The  lives 
some  people  lead  aroused  her  pity,  but  did  not  interest 
her.  She  would  not  have  cared  greatly  to  know  that 
the  bank  where  the  two  girls  were  employed  was  the 
Travelers'  And  Traders',  that  they  were  both  in  the 
invoicing  department,  and  that  one  of  them  was  not  a 
Stieffel  at  all.  But  for  this  latter,  it  is  conceivable 
that  Randon  might  not  have  followed  up  his  discov- 
eries, hampered  as  he  was  by  shyness ;  the  campaign 
demanded  an  aggressive  and  resourceful  character. 
Nettie  was  the  last  person  in  the  world  to  meet  him 
half  way,  or  even  to  vouchsafe  the  slightest  encourag- 


110  THE  NOON-MARK 

ing  sign,  and  to  take  the  renewal  of  their  acquaint- 
ance for  granted  or  to  push  himself  with  that  cool, 
distant,  spirited  young  piece  of  womanhood  was  be- 
yond him.  He  would  raise  his  hat,  passing  her,  and 
Nettie  would  give  him  a  brisk  jerk  of  her  high  little 
head,  and  there,  for  a  while,  the  adventure  ended. 
Thus  they  might  have  gone  on  forever,  had  not  Miss 
Aymar  been  stimulated*  by  curiosity  or  some  other 
more  characteristic  emotion  to  exercise  her  profes- 
sional skill. 

For  it  was  professional,  by  this  time.  Millie's  tal- 
ents developed  early  and  had  been  sedulously  culti- 
vated, though  had  she  been  the  merest  bungler,  she 
might  have  scored  her  triumphs  still  by  virtue  of 
sheer  physical  endowment.  Her  beauty  had  what 
Nettie's  perhaps  lacked,  a  delicately  seductive  quality ; 
the  girl  understood  it  perfectly,  studied  it,  adapted 
her  dress  to  it.  Nettie,  who  was  as  honest  as  the 
daylight,  wore  a  stiff,  high-collared  shirtwaist  because 
it  was  clean  and  practical;  it  gave  her  the  air  of  a 
charming  boy.  On  Millie,  the  same  shirtwaist  became 
a  garment  of  subtle  suggestion ;  her  throat  looked  too 
tender  for  the  iron-folds  of  linen,  her  slimly  rounded 
body  seemed  intolerably  imprisoned.  The  picture 
somehow  stirred  a  masculine  imagination  to  speculate 
as  to  what  she  would  be,  released.  Let  other  girls 
mistakenly  wear  too  revealing  embroideries,  too  trans- 
parent stockings,  Millie  went  provocatively  covered. 
It  was  genius. 

A  related  faculty  and  a  few  experiments  advised 
her  that  Randon  could  not  be  depended  on  to 
"  notice  "  when  he  was  being  "  noticed  " ;  more  direct 
methods  must  be  put  in  practice.  He  was,  for  all  the 
world,   just   like    Nettie    herself,    Millie    thought  — 


THE  NOON-MARK  111 

afraid  or  stand-offish.  The  other  girl  often  moved 
her  to  a  kind  of  lazy  impatience;  Millie  was  good- 
natured  enough,  and  fond  of  her  cousin  in  her  way ; 
she  could  not  understand  why  Nettie  ".  .  .  never  did 
seem  to  care  about  having  a  good  time  with  the 
men !  " 

"  First  thing  you  know,  you'll  get  too  old,  and  your 
looks  will  go,  and  then  they  won't  come  after  you  any 
more.  You'll  be  an  old  maid  if  you  don't  look  out," 
she  warned  in  all  sincerity. 

"I  should  worry,  shouldn't  I?"  Nettie  retorted. 
"  I've  got  enough  people  to  take  care  of  and  do  for 
already,  without  any  husband  foreverlastingly  hang- 
ing around." 

"You  don't  have  to  marry  the  young  kind,  you 
know,"  said  Millie  simply.  "  They  don't  often  have 
as  much  as  the  old  ones,  and  they  want  a  whole 
lot  more  fussing  over.  An  old  one  will  just  give  you 
anything  on  earth,  just  if  you'll  be  ordinarily  nice  to 
him.  I  don't  know  that  I'd  take  a  widower  —  not 
one  with  children  anyhow.  And  I'd  kind  of  hate  it 
if  he  was  bald.  Still  —  "  She  lapsed  into  a  medita- 
tive silence,  sitting  on  the  side  of  their  bed,  weaving  a 
ribbon  through  the  eyelets  of  an  intimate  under- 
garment; it  was  rose-pink  ribbon  which  would  be 
glimpsed  only  briefly  and  tantalizingly  through  the 
lawn  of  her  blouse.  *  I  repeat  that  Millie  had  genius. 
"  Wasn't  that  Randy  McQuair  you  bowed  to  to-day?  ' 

"  Yeah,"  said  Nettie,  through  a  couple  of  pins  she 
had  between  her  lips. 

"  I've  seen  him  before,  round  the  MacDonald  Build- 
ing. He  must  be  in  somebody's  office  over  there.  I 
guess  he's  come  back  here  to  live." 

"  Shouldn't  wonder." 


112  THE  NOON-MARK 

Millie  eyed  her  cousin  as  the  latter  intently  laid 
and  pinned  the  pleats  of  a  pique  skirt  that  needed  re- 
fitting, with  a  feeling  approaching  exasperation. 
"  '  Shouldn't  wonder ' !  "  she  echoed.  "  Well,  for  gra- 
cious' sake,  why  don't  you  find  out?  " 

"What  for?  It  isn't  anything  —  his  coming  back 
here  to  live,  I  mean,  is  it?  Some  of  his  folks  have  al- 
ways lived  here  from  'way  back  times.  And  anyway 
I  couldn't  find  out  without  asking  him,  and  he  hasn't 
ever  spoken,"  said  Nettie  in  her  most  matter-of-fact 
manner;  nevertheless  her  color  rose  faintly  as  she 
kept  her  eyes  on  her  own  charming  figure  in  the  glass. 

"  He  never  will  speak,  as  long  as  you  won't  even  bat 
an  eyelash  at  him.  And  I'll  bet  he's  just  crazy  to," 
said  the  experienced  Millie.  "  It  won't  hurt  you.  / 
would." 

"  Well,  do  it,  then !  " 

Millie  took  her  at  her  word  —  and  who  shall  say 
that  that  chilly  young  Vestal,  Nettie,  was  not  glad,  in 
her  heart  of  hearts?  The  very  next  day,  as  they  were 
hastening  towards  the  Dairy  Tea-Room,  whom  should 
they  run  into  but  Randon  hastening  in  the  opposite 
direction.  He  took  off  his  hat ;  they  went  a  few  steps ; 
Randon  looked  back ;  Millie  looked  back. 

"Oh!  Oh!  It's  Mr.  McQuair,  isn't  it?  Are  you 
back  home  now?  For  good?  You  don't  say!  Well, 
we  haven't  seen  you  in  a  thousand  years!  I  do  be- 
lieve the  last  time  was  on  that  old  boat  that  time  we 
all  went  up  to  Coney  Island,  remember?  " 


VI 

THE  meeting  came  about  so  spontaneously, 
so  naturally,  they  all  seemed  to  be  so 
little  changed  and  fell  back  so  readily 
upon  the  old  days,  with  laughter  and  questions 
and  piecing  out  of  recollections  that  Randon 
afterwards  wondered  with  some  scorn  of  himself 
why  he  had  so  magnified  its  importance?  He  might 
as  well  have  spoken  to  Nettie  long  before ;  no  imper- 
tinence about  it  to  a  common-sense  view,  and  common- 
sense  was  now,  as  always,  her  strongest  characteris- 
tic. He  did  not  envisage  clearly  how  much  he  owed 
to  Millie ;  nowadays,  as  ten  years  earlier,  he  was  not 
attracted  by  Millie,  in  spite  of  her  conspicuous  attrac- 
tions. The  girl,  with  her  gift  of  astuteness  in  such 
matters,  sensed  his  indifference,  and  to  do  her  justice, 
made  no  attempt  to  overcome  it,  and  bore  neither  him 
nor  Nettie  any  ill-will  because  of  it.  Whatever  the 
imperfections  of  her  make-up,  Millie  was  not  jealous; 
she  was  too  secure  in  her  own  powers;  and  for  the 
matter  of  that,  there  were  plenty  of  fish  in  the  sea  as 
good  as  Randy  McQuair! 

"  They  were  too  funny  for  words,  Net  and  him  both. 
They  ought  to  have  had  a  fire  built  under  'em  — 
anything  to  get  'em  started!  I  just  couldn't  stand 
it!  "  she  declared  with  laughter.  "  You  never  would 
have  guessed  they'd  ever  met  —  and  they  used  to  have 
a  regular  case  when  we  were  all  kids  together!  " 

"We  did  not!"  cried  out  Nettie,  the  pink  flaring 

113 


114  THE  NOON-MARK 

into  her  cheeks.  "  Speak  for  yourself !  You've  got 
him  and  I  mixed  up  with  some  of  your  own  crushes." 
"Who  you  talking  about  anyhow?"  their  Aunt 
Julia  asked.  "  Here,  Frank,  want  to  wipe  this? 
Watch  out,  now,  it's  awful  wet  and  slippery !  "  she 
admonished  him  in  that  tone  of  perfunctory  kindness 
which  it  is  to  be  feared  we  too  often  employ  towards 
people  in  poor  Frank's  condition.  He  received  the 
plate  obediently  and  gingerly,  handling  it  with  a 
man's  awkward  care.  They  were  washing  up  after 
supper,  and  Julia  had  been  making  such  a  racket  with 
torrents  of  water  thundering  into  the  sink,  and 
stacked  crockery  clashing,  that  little  else  could  be 
heard ;  she  was  herself  more  in  need  of  cautioning  than 
Frank,  with  her  rough,  hasty  movements.  The  two 
girls  had  come  in  late  as  often  happened,  and  were 
taking  their  meal  at  one  end  of  the  kitchen  table 
which  was  also  the  dining-table.  The  Stieffel  family 
ate  in  the  kitchen  altogether  nowadays,  since  the  par- 
lor of  necessity  had  had  to  be  converted  into  a  bed- 
room for  the  invalid ;  he  could  not  get  up-  and  down- 
stairs by  himself.  Mrs.  Frank  often  deplored  the 
sad  lack  of  refinement  about  this  arrangement,  and 
that  they  had  not  the  foresight  to  buy  the  Weavers' 
all-on-one-floor  bungalow  which  had  been  for  sale 
at  the  same  time  as  this  house.  The  erstwhile  dining- 
room  was  the  only  place  for  the  girls  to  "  see  their 
company "  she  sighed,  and  everybody  had  to  go 
through  there  to  get  to  any  other  part;  and  there 
was  always  so  much  to  do  when  Pa  went  to  bed  to 
get  him  fixed  all  comfortable,  you  know,  it  was  kinda 
embarrassing.  It  wasn't  one  bit  refined  —  but  what 
could  you  do?  She  came  in  at  the  moment  with  the 
hot-water  bottle  to  be  emptied  and  filled  again;  it 


THE  NOON-MARK  115 

had  lain  on  the  table  in  the  dining-room  all  day,  along 
with  Frank's  shaving-things,  a  pan  of  fudge  some  of 
the  children  had  been  making  last  night,  "  The  Fatal 
Wedding  "  by  Charlotte  M.  Clay,  and  the  pieces  of 
little  Boy's  railroad-toy.  What  could  you  do,  to  be 
sure,  with  such  an  assemblage  of  unrefined  articles? 
Mrs.  Stieffel,  in  point  of  fact,  did  nothing;  not  only 
the  table  but  the  Mission  sideboard  and  the  chairs 
bore  a  similar  accumulation  from  one  week's  end  to 
another,  most  of  it  under  a  handsome  bloom  of  dust. 

"  Who  you  talking  about?  "  said  Julia  between  two 
turns  of  the  faucet,  and  Millie  told  her  they  were 
talking  about  Randy  McQuair.  Julia  turned  from 
the  sink  with  a  troubled  expression  flickering  momen- 
tarily across  her  ageing,  homely  face;  but  that  may 
have  been  due  to  the  steam  clouding  her  spectacles; 
she  took  them  off  to  wipe  them,  holding  them  to  the 
light.  "  Well,  I  hope  you  remembered  to  call  him 
Mr.  McQuair,"  she  said,  with  a  brief  glance  at  Nettie. 

"Right  now,  of  course  —  but  just  you  wait!"  said 
Millie  roguishly,  and  she  too  glanced  at  Nettie  who, 
for  her  part,  went  on  consuming  canned  salmon, 
canned  tomatoes  and  canned  pineapple,  with  an  inflex- 
ible countenance. 

"  I'd  just  as  lief  as  not  call  him  by  his  first  name," 
she  said  coolly.  "  'T  wouldn't  be  anything  so  aw- 
fully out  of  the  way.  Supposing  he  called  me  Nettie, 
I  wouldn't  scream  and  faint." 

"  You  and  him  was  little  sweethearts  anyway, 
wasn't  you,  Nettie?  "  asked  that  unfortunate  Mrs. 
Frank,  scenting  romance  delightedly  —  and  then  in- 
deed Nettie  did  blaze  up ! 

"  Oh,  my  goodness,  Ma,  do  quit !  You  make  me 
tired  always  thinking  things !  "  she  snapped  out,  and 


116  THE  NOON-MARK 

jumped  up  with  a  fierce  movement,  and  went  to  the 
sink  with  her  plate  and  cup  and  saucer.  Millie 
laughed  at  this  outburst  of  annoyance;  to  be  teased 
about  a  young  man  nowise  disturbed  Millie's  equi- 
librium. When  her  uncle  slyly  inquired  whether  this 
wasn't  Elmer's  night,  or  which  one  of  'em  was  she 
expecting,  she  merely  looked  conscious  and  giggled. 

"  I  guess  I  better  make  myself  scarce  anyhow,"  said 
Frank,  cheerfully.  He  was  always  cheerful ;  even  at 
the  first  when  he  suffered  cruelly,  even  later  when  the 
pain  at  last  departed,  but  left  him  almost  helpless, 
with  a  tormenting  difficulty  of  articulation,  even  later 
still  after  speech  had  been  slowly  re-acquired  when  it 
became  a  certainty  that  he  would  not  be  able  to  work 
again,  but  must  be  taken  care  of  the  rest  of  his  days 
—  even  through  all  this  he  had  never  been  heard  to 
complain.  He  cried  a  little  when  the  last  dark  news 
was  broken  to  him,  but  only  because  he  was  physically 
so  weak,  as  he  assured  them  in  an  utterance  that  was 
still  more  or  less  thick  and  stumbling.  "  Weak  's  a 
dishrag,  y'  know.  Reg'lar  kid.  No  use  cryin'.  All 
ri'  dreckly !  "  he  managed  to  get  out  painfully,  gal- 
lantly. Now  as  he  sat  in  the  wheeled  chair  by  the 
sink,  though  he  was  no  longer  ill,  he  looked  like  an 
old,  old  man.  Thev  could  not  afford  to  have  the  bar- 
ber  come  to  cut  his  hair  as  often  as  it  needed.  Some- 
one at  the  bank  had  made  him  a  present  of  a  safety- 
razor  which  he  could  use  fairly  well;  but  his  chin 
was  generally  stubbly,  and  he  went  without  a  collar 
these  days.  Laundry-work  was  so  expensive,  and  she 
simpty  could  not  do  up  men's  collars,  Mrs.  Maggie 
explained  with  a  sigh;  she  had  so  much  to  do,  any- 
how, some-things  just  had  to  be  let  go.  The  theory 
likewise  accounted  for  the  invalid's  none  too  clean 


THE  NOON-MARK  117 

shirts,  his  old  damaged  carpet-slippers,  the  holes  in 
his  stockings,  the  spots  on  his  coat.  Now  he  wiped 
his  fingers  on  the  dish-towel,  and  took  hold  of  the 
rims  of  the  wheels  on  either  side  at  the  top,  making 
ready  to  propel  himself  away.  "  Soon's  yon  get  that 
fixed,  Mother—?" 

"  You  stay  right  where  you  are  as  long  as  you  feel 
like  it,  Pop,''  said  his  oldest  daughter  authoritatively. 
"  You  don't  have  to  go  off  and  hide  just  because  of 
Elmer  Ilands,  I  hope.  Millie  don't  want  you  to 
either,  do  you,  Millie?" 

"  Sure  not !  "  said  Millie  warmly.  Then  she  added  : 
"  Only  thing  is  Elmer  oughtn't  to  get  the  idea  we're 
taking  him  in  and  treating  him  like  one  of  the  family. 
I  don't  think  that's  a  good  plan  with  any  man.  It 
looks  too  anxious  —  and  the  dear  knows  I'm  not  anx- 
ious about  him  or  anybody !  "  she  finished  off  with 

spirit. 

She  could  have  said  nothing  better  calculated  to 
arouse  all  of  Nettie's  touchy  independence;  indeed, 
the  pride  of  the  whole  family  was  somehow  pricked. 
Elmer  Hands,  forsooth!  As  if  they  were  going  to 
turn  the  house  upside  down  to  catch  Elmer  Hands! 
Nevertheless,  turning  the  house  upside  down  was  pre- 
cisely what  everybody  —  excepting  Millie  herself  — 
immediately  proceeded  to  do!  Frank  energetically 
wheeled  himself  off  to  the  parlor-bedroom;  Mrs.  Stief- 
fel  spun  about  the  kitchen  in  an  effort  to  locate  and 
pack  up  the  pepsin-tablets,  the  eye-shade,  the  flannel 
rags,  the  medicine  and  tumbler,  the  plate  of  matzos 
for  a  nocturnal  luncheon,  the  dozen  and  one  pitiful 
small  comforts  on  which  the  invalid  depended;  Julia 
gathered  together  her  sewing  and  climbed  the  stairs 
to  the  cold  back  bedroom ;  Nettie  hustled  through  the 


118  THE  NOON-MARK 

remaining  dishes  so  as  to  have  time  to  straighten  up 
the  dining-room  and  make  it  presentable  —  all  so 
that  the  imminent  visitor  should  feel  himself  in  a  suf- 
ficiently formal  atmosphere.  Beyond  setting  the 
preparations  on  foot  with  that  artless  little  speech, 
Millie  took  no  part  in  them.  She  went  upstairs  and 
embarked  on  an  ensnaring  toilette.  Dressing  herself 
was  always  a  business  of  time  and  studious  consid- 
eration with  Miss  Aymar,  though,  oddly  enough,  she 
was  not  nearly  so  fastidious  personally  as  the  brisk 
and  punctual  Nettie  who  never  lacked  a  button  or 
tolerated  a  smirch,  whose  thick  hair  always  lay  in 
faultless  folds,  who  glowed  daily  from  a  rousing  cold 
bath,  who  spent  a  hard-earned  fifty  cents  every  Satur- 
day afternoon  to  have  her  nails  manicured.  When 
Elmer,  very  nattily  combed  and  cravatted;  arrived 
about  eight  o'clock,  there  was  only  Millie  to  receive 
him  in  her  dark  blue  cotton  crepe  with  her  hair  ar- 
ranged in  the  nest  of  puffs  and  short  curls  and  encir- 
cling braids  just  then  in  fashion.  Except  for  an  occa- 
sional scuffling  and  squealing  invasion  of  the  younger 
Stieffels,  and  for  indeterminate  subdued  sounds  from 
behind  the  closed  double-doors  leading  into  the  parlor, 
they  were  in  a  most  genteel  privacy. 

Elmer  was  a  pretty  steady  caller  at  the  Stieffel 
house  —  but  not  too  steady ;  Millie  would  never  allow 
any  young  man  to  become  so  steady  as  to  shut  out 
other  young  men.  She  jockeyed  them  all  with  ad- 
mirable skill,  and  a  curiously  unerring  intuition  as 
to  the  aims  and  character  of  the  average  male.  Her 
field  of  maneuvers  might  have  been  narrowed  had 
Nettie  possessed  the  same  tastes  and  gifts;  but,  as 
it  was,  the  other  girl  had  a  practical  monopoly.  Nettie 
had  never  yet  seen  the  man  for  whom   she  would 


THE  NOON-MARE  119 

turn  over  her  hand  —  so  she  said  —  and  as  to  the 
light  yet  elaborate  labors  of  a  flirtation  or  a  half  a 
dozen  flirtations  carried  on  at  once  in  Millie's  style, 
she  could  not  be  brought  to  regard  them  as  entertain- 
ing. "  It  must  be  deadly  tiresome  to  get  to  really 
caring  for  a  man,  let  alone  pretending  to!  "  she  said. 
Millie  was  not  sorry;  two  couples  in  the  dining-room 
would  have  made  the-  game  so  uninteresting  as  to  be 
hardly  worth  while  at  all.  So  now  while  she  sat  and 
cooed  with  Elmer,  Nettie  in  stern  retirement  with 
her  i^unt  Julia  as  of  old,  addressed  circulars  at  a  little 
shaky  table  jammed  close  up  against  the  machine  so 
that  both  of  them  could  get  the  benefit  of  the  single 
gas-jet. 

"  Extra  job,  Net?  "  her  aunt  asked. 

"  Yep.  It's  for  the  Warren  Soap  advertising- 
man.  One  of  the  girls  heard  about  him  wanting  it 
done,  so  she  and  I  got  it." 

"  Well,  you  want  to  take  care  and  not  use  your 
eyes-  too  hard." 

They  worked  on  in  silence  for  a  while.  "  How's 
Randy  McQuair  — that  is,  Mr.  McQ'uair  —  how's  he 
look  nowadays?."  said  Julia,  correcting  herself  with 
some  emphasis ;  she  looked  sidewise  at  her  niece,  bit- 
ing off  a  thread. 

"Why,  just  the  same  — only  more  grown-up,  of 
course,"  said  Nettie  —  and  went  on  rapidly  scoring 
down  name  after  name  in  her  firm,  clear,  clerkly 
hand.  Julia  said  to  herself  that  she  would  give  her 
eyebrows  to  know  what  the  young  man  had  said,  how 
he  had  acted,  above  all,  whether  there  had  been  any- 
thing hinted  about  his  coming  to  see  the  girls.  She 
was  afraid  to  ask,  afraid  of  irritating  Nettie,  of 
wounding  her,  of  merely  rousing  too  much  interest. 


120  THE  NOON-MARK 

And  why  should  old  Julia  Stieffel  have  worried  her 
spinster  head  over  the  possibilities  of  Randon  —  of 
Mr.  McQuair  —  being  attentive  to  her  niece  Nettie? 
She  herself  could  scarcely  have  told;  but  she  would 
have  had  something  much  more  definite  to  worry 
about  could  she  have  known  what  was  passing  through 
Nettie's  mind  as  that  hitherto  frigid-eyed  young  dam- 
set  sat  and  addressed  circulars.  At  first  it  annoyed 
Nettie  herself  to  find  that  she  was  continually  stray- 
ing off  to  that  day's  meeting  —  annoyed  and  even  a 
little  alarmed  her,  obscurely.  James  D.  Kane,  Tulsa, 
Oklahoma  —  he  really  was  not  so  terribly  good-look- 
ing, he  just  looked  different;  you  might  call  it  dis- 
tinguished, only  that  was  a  kind  of  fancy  word.  Any 
way  he  wasn't  a  bit  like  any  other  man  she  ever  saw 
—  Arthur  Keane,  Versailles,  Kentucky  —  come  to 
think  of  it,  he  always  had  been  different.  Maybe  it 
was  his  manners,  kind  of  quiet  —  Mrs.  Virgil  P. 
Kent,  Poplar  Street,  City  —  lie  must  look  nice  in  a 
dress-suit;  seems  as  if  it  would  suit  him,  somehow. 
He  dressed  in  awfully  good  style  anyhow,  nothing 
extreme;  and  still  he  didn't  look  finicky  or  Miss 
Nancy-ish  either,  he  just  looked  like  he  was  used  to 
it  and  didn't  ever  give  it  a  thought.  She  bet  he 
knew  when  girls  looked  nice,  too ;  she  bet  he  liked  to 
see  a  girl  neat  and  her  belt  and  skirt  always  holding 
together  and  no  powder  nor  nasty  smelly  perfume 
on.  He  wouldn't  like  the  sloppy  kind,  no  difference 
bow  pretty  they  were  —  Cris.  Knabel,  Little  Rock, 
Ark. —  Millie  might  make  fun  all  she  wanted,  it  was 
nice  of  him  to  kind  of  wait  and  hold  back,  and  not 
make  a  dead-set  at  you  because  of  knowing  you  when 
you  were  kids.  It  was  enough  nicer  to  be  that  way 
than  to  go  trailing  after  every  girl  that  looked  at  him ; 


THE  NOON-MARK  121 

plenty  of  fellows  were  fresh  that  way.  It  was  nice 
of  him  not  to  be.  She  might  get  up  earlier  to-morrow 
morning  and  press  out  her  handkerchief -linen  shirt- 
waist; it  was  all  washed  and  starched,  just  needed 
pressing.  She  could  do  it  up  again  for  Sunday.  Of 
course  he  wouldn't  go  to  the  Dairy  Tea-Room  for 
lunch  every  clay ;  he  likely  went  to  the  University  Club 
where  all  the  college  boys  went.     He  — 

"Through?''  queried  her  aunt  —  and  Nettie  all  at 
once  became  guiltily  and  affrightedly  aware  that  she 
had  been  sitting  with  suspended  pen,  staring  off  into 
nothingness  for  the  last  two  minutes  —  five  minutes 
—  she  did  not  know  how  long !  Then  and  there  she 
performed  very  nearly  the  first  purely  feminine  act 
of  her  life,  namely :  manufactured  a  glib  lie. 

"  No.  Just  resting."  She  doubled  over  her  work 
again  with  a  face  feeling  as  if  it  were  being  held  above 
a  red-hot  stove.  But  Aunt  Julia  obviously  had  no 
suspicions;  the  gods  with  their  conscienceless  irony 
made  easier  the  easy  Avernian  descent ;  Nettie  might 
tell  all  the  tarradiddles  she  chose,  her  lifelong  prac- 
tice of  tactless  and  uncompromising  honesty  rendered 
her  immune. 

In  the  meanwhile,  could  she  have  known  it,  Randy 
McQuair,  with  his  coat  off,  walking  around  a  green 
baize-covered  table  in  one  of  the  down-town  billiard- 
rooms  in  company  with  several  other  young  gentle- 
men, wras  having  much  the  same  difficulty  to  keep  his 
mind  on  the  business  —  or  pleasure  —  in  hand.  The 
curve  of  Nettie's  eyelashes,  the  pretty  ripple  in  her 
hair  where  it  was  brushed  up  at  the  back,  colored  like 
frost-nipped  beech-leaves  in  the  shadow,  in  the  sun 
living  bronze  —  the  firm  and  gracious  sweep  of  her 
shoulder  —  her  lithe,   sure-footed  walk  —  these  and 


122  THE  NOON-MARK 

sundry  other  details  of  her  appearance  recurred  to 
him  so  persistently  as  to  end  by  impairing  his  game. 
Jeering  execrations,  advice  to  replace  the  cue  with  a 
hoe,  satirical  inquiries  as  to  his  next  match  for  the 
championship,  sardonic  re-baptisms  as  Young  Shaef- 
fer  or  De  Oro,  ringed  him  round.  He  gave  up  at 
last  with  half-vexed  laughter.  "  Can't  do  it  to- 
night!" and  sought  the  line  of  chairs  against  the 
wall,  lit  a  cigarette  and  dreadful  to  report,  signaled 
to  Jerry  to  bring  him  a  stein.  Randon  was  a  temper- 
ate, really  an  abstemious  youth,  both  in  eating  and 
drinking,  but  his  present  frame  of  mind  seemed  to 
call  for  some  such  composing,  meditative  potion  as 
good  beer. 

The  beer  was  always  good  at  Schuler's;  it  was  a 
popular  place.  There  were  games  going  on  at  all 
of  the  six  or  seven  tables.  The  bar  was  in  another 
room,  on  the  corner  with  ornate  entrances  on  both 
streets;  it  was  very  high-class,  nothing  rowdy  ever 
allowed  to  go  on  there,  any  one  of  its  patrons  would 
assure  you.  At  the  same  time  a  more  incongruous 
setting  for  lover-like  reflections  of  the  kind  Randy 
was  now  indulging  in  could  scarcely  have  been  selec- 
ted; but  the  truth  was  he  did  not  yet  realize  that  he 
was  a  lover.  The  place  was  thick  with  indiscriminate 
odors ;  there  was  a  confusion  of  noises,  mens1  laughter, 
light  curses,  the  clicking  impact  of  numberless  balls, 
a  tumbler  somewhere  shattering  on  the  mosaic-tile 
floor,  one  obstreperous  table  at  the  far  end  of  the 
room  challenging  Schuler's  large-minded  interpreta- 
tion of  rowdiness  —  amidst  all  this  Randy  sat  and 
smoked  and  gazed  pensively  as  if  it  had  been  a  hill- 
side in  Arcady!  There  had  been  a  business-like 
brevity  about  her  speech  that  at  once  amused  and 


THE  NOON-MARK  123 

charmed ;  to  talk  business  with  that  month !  Her 
short  upper  lip  was  delicate  in  texture  and  as  deli- 
cately reflexed  as  the  petal  of  a  rose.  It  was  sacri- 
lege to  bind  a  creature  of  her  free  and  flaming  spirit 
down  to  the  drudgery  of  figures  and  calculations  and 
dull  peoples'  dull  accounts.  He  recalled  that,  as  a 
small  boy,  he  had  found  an  ancient  edition  of  "  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream  "  with  a  picture  of  Oberon  and 
Titania  in  the  quarrel  scene,  wherein  the  fairy  queen 
seemed  to  him  the  perfect  image  and  likeness  of  Net- 
tie, imperious  and  beautiful;  he  cut  it  out  and  kept 
it  surreptitiously.  Titania  had  grown  up  and  was 
Titania  still,  and  her  spell  was  reestablished.  Ran- 
don  wondered  at  and  roundly  rated  himself  for  negli- 
gence in  losing  sight  of  her  these  last  five  years.  A 
saying  of  Mrs.  McQuair's  that  it  was  almost  always 
harder  to  revive  an  old  friendship  than  to  make  a 
new  one  occurred  to  him  forcibly.  It  seemed  as  if, 
were  it  not  for  the  recollection  of  that  old-time  child- 
ish devotion,  they  would  be  much  more  at  ease  now, 
Nettie  and  he  —  or  at  least  he  wTould.  At  twelve 
years,  he  had  not  asked  if  he  might  go  to  see  her; 
he  had  gone !  Why  should  that  simplicity  of  behavior 
appear  so  unattainable  at  twenty-three?  All  the 
while  he  was  cloudily  aware  that  the  only  difficulties 
arose  from  certain  fears  based  on  certain  insistently 
distasteful  recollections  —  the  dumps,  the  down-at- 
heel  house,  poor  Miss  Stieffel  with  her  sagging  skirts, 
her  hat  perpetually  askew,  and  for  a  final  touch,  that 
damnable  wheel-chair ! 

Somebody  came  and  sat  down  beside  him;  it  was 
young  Marklein  over  at  the  bank,  whose  father  was 
vice-president  of  the  Travelers'  And  Traders'.  The 
two  young  men  exchanged  a  perfunctory  grunt  of  sal- 


124  THE  NOON-MARK 

utation ;  they  had  known  each  other  since  their  school- 
days at  the  select  institution  to  which  careful  elders 
had  consigned  them. 

"  'Lo,  Mac !  " 

"  'Lo ! " 

"  Not  playing?  " 

"  Quit.     Off  my  game." 

"  I'm  waiting  for  this  table." 

They  relapsed  into  silence.  Randon  thoughtfully 
rocked  the  last  of  the  beer  in  the  bottom  of  his  mug, 
and  finished  it. 

"  Have  another?  " 

"No,  thanks,  Emil.     I'm  going." 

"  I  saw  you  with  some  of  those  girls  from  our  place 
to-day,"  the  other  remarked  casually,  as  Randon  rose, 
stretching  and  shrugging  his  clothes  into  position. 
"  Nice-looking  lot  of  girls  we've  got  over  there.  That 
little  Miss  Stieffel  you  were  with  is  a  hummer.  You 
seem  to  know  her." 

"  Yeah,  I  know  her,"  said  Randon  shortly.  He 
considered  Marklein  both  offensively  patronizing  and 
offensively  inquisitive ;  what  business  was  it  of  Mark- 
lein's  what  the  girls  at  the  bank  looked  like,  or  who 
knew  them,  he  thought  most  unreasonably.  And  he 
decided  inwardly  that  he  never  had  had  any  use  for 
Emil  Marklein  anyhow. 


VII 

CONTRARY  to  the  teachings  of  his  previous 
experience  —  which,  to  be  sure,  had  not  been 
very  wide  —  Randon  now  discovered  that 
there  are  ever  so  many  ways  of  pursuing  an  acquaint- 
ance with  a  young  woman  besides  asking  her  if  you 
may  call,  and  going  to  her  house  of  an  evening;  those 
formal  devices  may  be  dispensed  with  altogether  under 
some  circumstances.  For  instance,  the  fact  that 
Nettie  was  "  in  a  position  " —  a  phrase  which  against 
his  will  he  somehow  preferred  to  the  alternative  de- 
scription of  her  as  a  "  working-girl  " —  facilitated 
matters.  The  principals  of  the  bank,  of  course,  jour- 
neyed majestically  to  their  duties  every  morning  in 
large,  glittering  automobiles  and  kept  more  or  less 
the  hours  of  leisure ;  one  and  all,  they  had  repeatedly 
favored  Mr.  McQuair  with  a  lift  on  his  own  town- 
ward  way.  But,  after  having  by  discreetly  circui- 
tous inquiries  found  out  what  was  required  of  the 
lesser  personnel  as  to  regularity  and  punctuality, 
could  anything  have  been  more  natural  for  a  law- 
student  in  Judge  Stanley's  office  than  to  be  taking  the 
trolley-car  at  the  same  time  as  a  clerk  at  the  Travel- 
ers' And  Traders'?  —  or  to  be  going  out  to  luncheon? 
—  or  starting  for  home?  Or  to  walk  some  part  of 
Miss  Stieffers  road  with  her,  say  as  far  as  the  corner 
of  Rochester  Avenue,  seeing  that  it  was  also  his  own 
road  —  if  he  fetched  a  compass  around  two  squares, 
and  back  nearly  to  the  starting-point,  that  is?     In  the 

125 


126  THE  NOON-MARK 

old  days,  he  had  been  used  to  cutting  across  the 
dumps,  but  that  territory  was  all  built  up  and  built 
over  now. 

Somehow  Randon  never  got  any  farther  than  that 
Rochester  Avenue  corner,  though  the  Stieffel  front- 
door was  almost  in  sight;  truly,  Nettie  never  inti- 
mated by  so  much  as  a  gesture  or  an  inflection  of  the 
voice,  much  less  in  actual  words  that  his  company 
was  desired.  "  Let  him  do  the  asking ! "  was  her 
proud  motto.  She  did  not  resent  his  failure  to  do 
so,  however,  or  invent  the  forlorn  excuses  and  explana- 
tions with  which  most  women  seek  to  beguile  their 
sharper  judgment.  No,  Nettie  steadfastly  believed  in 
and  practiced  the  gospel  of  live  and  let  live;  people 
did  this  or  that  because  it  was  "their  way."  Why 
shouldn't  they?  And  why  worry  about  "  their  way," 
or  question  it?  Did  not  she,  Nettie  Stieffel,  want  to 
go  ahead  and  do  her  own  "way"?  Well,  then — ! 
She  would  have  frankly  told  you  that  she  liked  Ran- 
don —  liked  him  much  more  now  than  when  they  were 
children.  She  liked  his  being  taller  than  herself  — 
there  were  so  many  young  men  who  were  not  so  tall ; 
and  she  liked  a  certain  appearance  which  she  hazily 
defined  to  herself  in  a  hackneyed  catchword  of  the 
day  as  "  clean-cut."  Above  all  she  liked  his  man- 
ners, even  to  so  ridiculously  petty  a  detail  as  the 
fashion  in  which  he  took  off  his  hat ;  there  was  some- 
thing about  his  gesture,  she  thought,  wholly  different 
from  other  men's,  though  indescribable.  In  very 
truth,  it  did  partake  of  Randon's  sincere  deference  to 
the  other  sex,  and  expressed  an  attitude  of  mind  rather 
than  mere  obedience  to  a  convention. 

"Oh,  good-morning,  Miss  Stieffel!"  (And  off  it 
would  come,  as  if  she  were  doing  him  a  favor  to  let 


THE  NOON-MARK  127 

him  stand  uncovered  in  her  presence ! )  "  Are  you 
going  to  take  this  next  car,  or  walk  a  little  way?  It's 
a  lovely  morning  for  a  walk  — " 

"  Why,  I  don't  care !  " 

And  upon  this  non-committal  reply,  they  would  fall 
into  step  side  by  side,  and  very  likely  get  as  far  as 
the  Christian  Science  church,  or  maybe  even  to  the 
Paradise  Park  entrance  before  discovering  with  a 
duet  of  burlesque  terror,  that  they  had  only  ten 
minutes  left  to  get  in  town.  Perhaps  they  enjoyed 
the  ensuing  run  and  scramble  for  the  car  as  much  as 
the  culpable  loitering.  Nettie  was  as  fleet,  graceful 
and  shapely  as  a  deer  —  or  so  the  young  man  fatuously 
thought ;  she  was  still  enough  of  a  tomboy  to  delight 
in  the  race,  and  it  tickled  him  infinitely  to  shorten  his 
stride  so  as  not  to  outstrip  her.  "  I  should  think 
you'd  be  corking  at  any  kind  of  athletics.  Ever  try 
anything  in  particular?  " 

Nettie  shook  her  head.  No,  she  couldn't  swim, 
couldn't  play  tennis,  couldn't  —  this  other  game, 
what's  the  name  of  it?  The  one  where  you  knock 
a  little,  teenty  ball  round  on  the  ground?  Oh,  golf! 
Yes,  that  was  it !  They  had  a  club  for  playing  it  out 
on  Adams  Road;  she'd  seen  'em  — at  a  distance,  of 
course.  It  didn't  appeal  to  her  much  —  looked  so 
kind  of  silly,  you  know,  grown  people  running  around 
with  that  little  ball,  and  having  to  have  one  of  those 
boys  trail  after  'em  and  help  find  it.  She  could  roller- 
skate,  of  course.  She  hadn't  ever  tried  horseback 
riding,  but  all  there  was  to  it  was  sticking  on  the 
horse,  and  she  guessed  she  could  do  that.  But  she 
hadn't  ever  had  any  time  to  fool  away  on  games; 
she  went  to  work  the  minute  she  got  out  of  school. 
"Well,  I'm  not  much  good  at  anything  myself," 


128  THE  NOON-MARK 

said  Randon,  rather  hastily.  It  too  often  happened 
that  information  like  the  above  innocently  imparted 
by  Nettie  had  the  effect  of  momentarily  setting  her  at 
a  distance  from  him,  reminding  him  of  some  intangi- 
ble barrier,  or  opening  some  invisible  strait  which 
the  young  man  wanted  with  his  whole  soul  to  avoid, 
to  forget.  Questioned,  he  would  have  savagely  denied 
that  it  existed  at  all.  "  I'm  not  heavy  enough.  I 
used  to  be  on  the  track-team  at  college  —  the  class- 
team,  not  the  'Varsity  —  " 

"What's  the  difference?  What  d'you  mean, 
1  track-team,'  anyhow?" 

There  it  was  again !  His  girl  cousins,  all  their 
friends,  the  other  girls  he  danced  with,  sent  candy  to, 
took  to  the  football-match,  they  all  spoke  shibboleth. 
No  need  to  explain  anything  to  them.  At  such  mo- 
ments Randon  thought  irrelevantly  that  there  was 
something  ineradicably  wrong  with  our  entire  social 
system.  This  is  a  democracy  —  nay,  it  is  the  de- 
mocracy; we  have  no  castes,  no  classes;  everybody  is 
as  good  as  everybody  else;  everybody  is  the  same  as 
everybody  else.     Of  course,  of  course ! 

"  Why,  the  track  events  are  the  ones  you  go  in  for 
singly  —  on  your  own,  you  know  —  sprinting  and 
pole-vaultiug  and  all  that,"  he  said  lamely.  "  That 
is,  generally  speaking  —  " 

"  Oh !  Do  you  do  all  that  right  out  before  a  crowd 
of  people,  same  as  the  boat-races  and  all?  My,  there's 
a  whole  lot  going  on  at  college  besides  getting  your 
education,  isn't  there? "  Nettie  remarked  with  in- 
terest. "  It's  the  same  way  at  girls'  colleges,  too.  I 
know  a  girl  that  went  to  one,  and  she's  all  the  time 
talking  about  the  flag-rush,  and  the  juniors'  picnic 
for  the  seniors  and  fraternity  dances  and  things  like 


THE  NOON-MARK  129 

that.  It  was  a  co-ed  —  boys  and  girls  both,  you  know. 
By  what  she  says  they  must  have  had  a  grand  time. 
Sometimes  I  wish  I  could  have  had  the  chance  to 
go  —  but  —  I  don't  know  —  "  she  gave  a  kind  of  pen- 
sive and  dubious  sigh.  "  They  keep  talking  about 
how  much  good  and  what  an  advantage  it  is  in  busi- 
ness, and  saying  you  can't  get  any  kind  of  a  job 
without  you  have  a  degree  from  some  college  —  but 
look  at  me!  I'm  holding  on  every  bit  as  well  as  this 
girl  for  all  her  degree.  Seems  as  if  it  would  be  kind  of 
foolish  to  put  all  that  money  into  something  you  could 
just  as  well  do  without." 

Randon  changed  the  subject.  "  Tell  you  what: 
I'm  sure  there's  enough  level  space  around  our  old 
place  somewhere  to  line  off  a  court  on  —  for  singles 
anyhow.  I  could  get  a  net  and  some  balls  and  things 
and  we  could  play  a  little.  You'd  learn  right  off, 
and  it's  a  barrel  of  fun.  For  two  people,  especially. 
There're  aren't  many  games  that  are  good  for  only 
two  players;  but  tennis  is  first-rate.  We  could  play 
Sundays  —  you  aren't  awfully  strict  about  keeping 
Sundays,  are  you?  " 

Nettie  laughed.  "  Gracious,  I  keep  Sunday  all  the 
rest  of  the  week  as  far  as  being  good  and  serious 
goes.  I  guess  that  lets  me  out.  As  long  as  Sunday's 
the  only  time  I've  got  to  rest  up  and  enjoy  myself, 
I'm  going  to  take  it,"  she  said  without  bitterness. 
"  If  I  go  to  the  bad  place,  I  wouldn't  wonder  if  I'll 
find  people  there  that's  in  for  something  worse !  " 
Randon  felt  violently  that  he  would  give  anything  he 
had,  he  would  give  his  right  hand,  he  would  give  a 
year  out  of  his  life,  to  be  able  to  take  her  out  of  this 
grind  that  she  bore  so  gallantly. 

As  it  happened,  however,  he  did  not  do  any  of  those 


130  THE  NOON-MARK 

things;  he  did  not  even  lay  out  the  tennis-court. 
Means,  time,  opportunity  were  always  lacking  some- 
bow  —  or  so  he  made  himself  believe.  He  took  Nettie 
to  luncheon  at  the  fashionable  restaurants,  he  took  her 
rowing  on  the  river ;  he  took  her  to  see  the  Ben  Greet 
performance  of  "  As  You  Like  It "  in  Paradise  Park, 
and  to  the  summer-opera  up  at  Coney  Island.  Some- 
times they  came  across  people  he  knew,  sometimes  it 
would  be  members  of  Nettie's  circle;  but  as  the  fine 
old  adage  about  two  being  company  and  three  none 
is  pretty  generally  known  and  accepted,  neither  set 
of  acquaintances  bestowed  an  inconvenient  attention 
on  the  pair,  openly  at  any  rate.  Occasionally  they 
joined  forces  with  Millie  and  Elmer  Hands  whom  that 
young  lady  had  not  dismissed  as  yet;  Millie  was 
against  dismissing  anybody  until  some  better  pros- 
pect turned  up,  and  even  in  that  event  she  believed 
in  a  sheet-anchor-to-wind'ard  policy.  One  never 
knows  what  may  happen.  Elmer  had  a  good  job  with 
the  Midland  Coal  &  Coke  Company;  he  was  drawing 
twenty-five  dollars  a  week  with  fair  chances  of  an  ad- 
vance. Mr.  Randon  McQuair's  income  was  not  in 
excess  of  that,  for  all  his  old  name,  old  family,  old 
house  and  all  the  rest  of  his  supposed  advantages; 
and  the  future  promised  him  no  more  and  no  less  than 
Elmer ;  success  for  either  one  would  be  dependent  on 
his  own  exertions,  his  own  abilities.  The  two  young 
men  liked  each  other  well  enough;  in  fact,  the  ar- 
rangement of  their  partie  carree  ( namely :  which  girl 
paired  with  which  youth)  was  so  clearly,  if  tacitly 
understood,  that  neither  Elmer  nor  Randon  would 
have  been  so  well  satisfied  with  the  company  of  any 
other  man,  even  his  best  friend's.  This  way  there 
was  no  poaching,  no  jealous  uncertainty,  no  division 


THE  NOON-MARK  131 

of  attention.  And  in  union  there  is  strength;  for  a 
quartette  is  not  nearly  so  subject  to  interruptions 
from  outsiders  as  a  duo. 

One  of  their  expeditions  was  to  the  Utopia  Track  on 
a  Saturday  afternoon  during  the  racing-season.  The 
girls  met  them  down  at  the  West  End  station,  Nettie 
in  her  last  year's  brown  suit  freshened  with  a  new  im- 
maculate white  collar  on  the  jacket  and  white  cuffs, 
and  with  a  new  brown  velvet  hat  tipped  at  exactly  the 
right  slant  over  her  hair  that  matched  it,  but  with  a 
ruddy  iridescence.  Mrs.  Duncan,  that  good  soul, 
made  that  hat  and  charged  her  only  seven  dollars  and 
a  half;  she  was  fond  of  the  girl.  Millie  bloomed  like 
a  camelia  in  dove-gray  that  set  off  her  impeccably  clear 
matte  coloring  to  perfection.  They  were  so  lovely  a 
couple  that  Elmer  might  be  pardoned  the  burst  of 
pride  and  admiration  in  which  he  assured  the  other 
young  man  that  they  had  "  the  two  best-looking  girls 
on  the  train !  " 

"And  some  fresh  guys  around  here  seem  to  think 
so  too,"  he  added,  glancing  about  a  trifle  truculently, 
not  lowering  his  voice.  "  Looks  like  they  wanted  to 
make  sure  of  knowing  us  again  when  they  see  us." 

He  pointed  this  comment  with  a  hostile  glare  at 
two  or  three  of  the  offenders  who  indeed  were  eyeing 
their  group  rather  too  attentively.  Randon  had  an 
uncomfortable  second;  Hands  ought  to  know  better 
than  to  notice  those  loud  sports;  it  would  make  the 
girls  more  unpleasantly  conspicuous  than  any  amount 
of  staring,  he  thought  with  irritation;  you  saw  all 
kinds  of  men  at  the  races  —  and  women,  too,  for  that 
matter;  the  best  pose  in  a  public  place  is  blank  in- 
difference. In  spite  of  himself  there  were  times  when 
he  perceived  with  a  flash  of  unwelcome  insight  that  the 


132  THE  NOON-MARK 

others  lacked  not  what  they  themselves  would  have 
called  refinement,  but  that  far  more  serviceable  qual- 
ity, sophistication. 

He  let  his  own  gaze  move  carelessly  over  the  starers, 
and  found  his  off-hand  judgment  confirmed.  They 
were  not  a  party  of  young  fellows  out  for  mere  fun, 
excitement  and  adventure;  all  three  of  them  con- 
formed recognizably  to  the  type  he  labelled  cheap 
sport  —  the  fat  man  in  the  flashy  suit  and  green  tie 
with  a  miniature  slipper  of  diamonds  stuck  in  it, 
the  other  one  with  the  close-set  eyes,  not  quite  so  pros- 
perously dressed,  who  was  now  studying  a  racing-card 
and  pencilling  notes  on  it,  the  big  good-looking  fel- 
low without  any  overcoat  —  he'd  probably  hocked  it 
for  the  money  to  go  out  to  Utopia  and  play  the  horses, 
Randon  thought  contemptuously  —  every  one  of  them 
had  the  curiously  unmistakable  air  of  those  whose 
onlv  industrv  is  what  the  working-world  regards  as 
idleness.  The  cramped,  noisy,  dirty,  ramshackle  lit- 
tle trains  that  shuttled  back  and  forth  between  Utopia 
and  the  city  daily  for  six  weeks  every  spring  and 
fall,  were  crowded  with  their  kind.  Young  McQuair, 
who  nevertheless  was  not  at  all  straightlaced  or  Phar- 
isaical, surveyed  the  present  car-full  with  scornful 
wonder,  figuring  to  himself  their  unstable  existence 
—  in  luck,  out  of  luck,  now  princes,  now  paupers,  bal- 
ancing forever  on  the  slack  wire  of  Chance ;  of  all  in- 
sane ways  to  make  a  living  — !  And  just  as  he  was  in 
the  middle  of  these  handsome  reflections,  the  overcoat- 
less  young  man  spoke  to  him ! 

"  Say,  haven't  we  met  somewhere?  "  was  his  stupe- 
fying overture:  "I  seem  to  remember  you  anyhow." 
And,  as  Randon  stood  speechless  in  sheer  surprise  — 


THE  NOON-MARK  133 

"  My  name's  Marvin,"  said  the  other  frankly  and  en- 
gagingly. 

With  the  words  sundry  vaporous  odds  and  ends  of 
memories  that  had  already  begun  to  float  through 
Randon's  mind,  condensed;  the  garden,  the  rabbits, 
the  din  of  battle;  he  had  the  grace  to  smile.  "Jim 
Marvin?  Why,  of  course !  I  believe  the  last  time  we 
met  you  blacked  my  eye !  " 

"  It  was  a  good  fight,  I  guess,"  Jim  responded  not 
untactfully,    grinning    too.     The    two    girls    looked 
towards  him  and  recognized  him  at  the  same  time, 
each  after  her  own  fashion,  Nettie  with  her  straight- 
forward gaze  fearless  but  not  bold,  Millie  with  a  quick 
half-appeal,  half-challenge.     The  other  racing  gentle- 
men  looked   on  with   lively  interest;  but,   to   Jim's 
credit  let  it  be  said,  he  neither  volunteered  to  present 
them,  or  thrust  himself  into  the  company  of  re-dis- 
covered acquaintances,  whether  out  of  native  courtesy 
or  from  some  feeling  connected  with  an  embarrassing 
lowness  of  pocket.     Randon  was  inclined  to  set  it 
down  to  the  latter  cause,  for  Jim  was  undeniably 
seedy.     His  clothes  needed  pressing,  his  linen  was  not 
so  fresh  as  it  might  have  been,  albeit  he  carried  him- 
self with  indomitable   jauntiness,   helped   out  by  a 
clean  shave  and  that  swarthy,  hawk-featured,  pirati- 
cal distinction  which  had  been  his  even  as  a  boy. 
Down  at  heel  and  not  too  clean  he  still  had  twice  the 
presence  of  either  Randy  McQuair  or  young  Hands 
who  was  a  slim,  unimportant  figure.     The  three  young 
men  talked,  standing  up  in  the  aisle,  jostling  to  and 
fro  as  the  train  swung  around  the  curves;  but  when 
the  crowd  was  discharged  on  the  Utopia  platform, 
Jim  joined  his  friends  —  or  his  chance  companions  — 


134  THE  NOON-MARK 

and  was  presently  swallowed  up,  blurred  from  view 
amongst  the  other  hats  and  shoulders.  Randon 
caught  a  glimpse  of  him  only  once  again  that  after- 
noon, in  the  jam  around  the  betting-sheds;  he  hoped 
with  the  perverse  good-will  we  sometimes  accord  to 
the  undeserving  that  Marvin  had  won,  or  re-couped 
a  little,  at  any  rate. 

"  That  was  Jim  Marvin,  wasn't  it?  I  knew  him 
right  off.  He  looks  just  the  same,"  Nettie  said.  "  I 
haven't  seen  him  since  the  year  One.  What's  he  been 
doing  all  this  time,  did  he  say?  " 

"  Don't  look  like  he'd  ever  done  much  of  anything, 
to  me"  Elmer  observed  cannily. 

Randon  answered  Nettie.  "  Yes,  he  said  he'd  been 
with  the  Big  Four  —  off  and  on,  that  is.  He  didn't 
say  what  position.  He  hasn't  got  anything  just 
now,  but  he's  going  with  the  Peabody  Tool  Works 
next  month  —  " 

"  That's  what  he  says,  anyhow,"  said  the  skeptical 
Mr.  Hands. 

"  —  He  knew  you,  too.  He  asked  me  if  you  weren't 
Nettie  Stieffel,"  said  Randon,  and  laughed  again. 
"  Remember  that  scrap  we  had,  and  Mr.  Peabody 
coming  along  and  stopping  us?" 

Millie  recalled  that  incident  too,  perfectly ;  she  had 
been  so  frightened !  "  I  thought  you  were  going  to 
kill  him.  I  didn't  care  a  thing  in  the  world  about 
Mm,  but  I  suppose  seeing  you  so  fierce  and  so  awfully 
strong,  just  fairly  wiping  up  the  ground  with  him  — 
I  suppose  that's  what  scared  me,"  she  said  to  Ran- 
don —  and  Randy,  though  his  own  recollections  did 
not  exactly  confirm  hers,  still  did  not  correct  her! 
The  idea  of  having  terrified  a  charmingly  soft,  deli- 
cate creature  like  Millie  by  a  hideous  display  of  brute 


THE  NOON-MARK  135 

force  applied  to  another  brute,  should  have  revolted 
him,  but  alas  for  the  souls  of  men,  it  didn't ! 

The  afternoon  wound  up  radiantly,  with  Randon 
ahead  fourteen  dollars,  and  Elmer  exactly  even ;  they 
all  had  their  fill  of  excitement,  and  to  crown  every- 
thing Mr.  Marklein  (junior)  whom  the  other  two 
young  men,  on  returning  from  one  of  their  trips  down- 
stairs, found  sitting  next  to  Nettie  and  chatting  very 
pleasantly  and  easily  —  he  had  happened  by  the 
merest  accident  to  run  across  the  young  ladies  as  he 
was  taking  a  stroll  around,  he  explained  —  took  them 
all  home  in  his  big  machine,  a  delightful  escape  from 
the  tedium,  dust  and  fatigue  of  the  ordinary  journey. 


VIII 

IN  no  great  while  Mr.  James  Marvin  disappointed 
Mr.  Hands'  suspicions  by  appearing  amongst 
the  Peabody  forces  at  the  MacDonald  Building, 
agreeably  to  his  announcement.  He  had  one  of  the 
minor  office-jobs,  it  seemed,  and  whether  it  paid  him 
enough  to  afford  the  conspicuous  changes  for  the  bet- 
ter in  his  wardrobe,  or  whether,  as  Elmer  sourly 
hinted,  his  sporting  activities  had  for  once  been  pro- 
ductive, who  can  say?  Elmer  disliked  and  distrusted 
him  most  unreasonably,  without  knowing  anything 
definite  about  him.  Here  he  was,  anyhow,  dark  and 
dashing  and  rather  too  stylishly  fitted  out  with 
striped  shirts,  silk  stockings,  suits  of  the  latest  fancy 
in  cut  and  materials;  his  taste  in  dress  had  perhaps 
been  modeled  on  that  of  his  associates  of  the  turf,  the 
billiard-parlor  and  other  "  high-class  "  places  of  enter- 
tainment. Here  was  Jim,  I  say,  a  little  too  jaunty, 
a  little  loud,  a  little  ostentatious  with  his  money,  his 
strong,  black,  expensive  cigars,  his  over-readiness  to 
treat,  his  propensity  for  making  eyes  at  a  pretty 
woman  now  inoccuously  occupying  a  clerkly  stool 
and  going  in  and  out  on  the  office-tides  three  times  a 
day  like  the  rest  of  them.  Being  a  newcomer,  it  was 
natural  that  he  should  seek  the  society  of  the  few 
people  he  knew  —  natural  but  highly  unpalatable  to 
those  two  less  showy  heroes,  Messrs.  Hands  and  Mc- 
Quair.  Elmer  thought  that  he  was  making  a  "  dead 
set  "  at  Millie.  Randon  was  sure  he  was  making  a 
"dead  set"  at  Nettie;  and,  unhappiest  trick  of  all, 

136 


THE  NOON-MARK  137 

their  doubts  of  Marvin  bred  a  doubt  of  each  other. 
As  in  many  another  game  that  starts  out  with  four 
the  addition  of  the  odd  hand  turned  the  system  of 
play  from  one  of  partnership  to  cut-throat. 

Very  likely  Millie  gently  fostered  these  jealousies; 
Nettie,  even  had  she  realized  that  they  existed,  would 
have  been  indifferent  to  them.  Yet,  as  time  went  on, 
it  was  certainly  Nettie  to  whom  young  Marvin  was 
most  attentive.  She  liked  him,  with  some  reserves; 
she  liked  Randon,  with  perhaps  fewer  reserves.  In 
fact,  Nettie  never  would  acknowledge  to  herself  how 
much  she  liked  Randon ;  she  was  obscurely  troubled  by 
the  same  consciousness,  not  of  social  inequality  — 
Heaven  forbid !  There  is  no  such  thing  as  inequality 
in  our  society,  is  there?  —  but  of,  let  us  say,  social 
difference,  that  hung  phantom-like  in  the  back  of 
Randon's  own  mind.  Nothing  of  the  kind  intervened 
between  her  and  Jim;  to  be  sure  there  was  a  sort  of 
distant  parallel  in  the  suspicion  she  had  that  Jim  had 
been  "fast"  and  might  be  so  still.  But,  whatever 
"fast"  connoted  to  Nettie,  it  was  something  easily 
understood,  likely  to  be  predicated  of  any  man ;  where- 
as her  unease  about  Randon  never  wTould  take  abso- 
lute shape. 

"  I  think  that's  the  best-looking  fellow  you  go  with 
—  I  mean  the  one  that's  in  the  law-office,"  a  desk- 
mate  among  the  girl  clerks  said  to  her  wistfully. 
"  He's  not  so  handsome;  it's  just  that  he  has  such  a 
refined  air  about  him  —  like  Sydney  de  Vere.  You've 
seen  him  in  this  last  picture,  haven't  you?  'Love's 
Dilemma'?  It's  at  the  Palace  —  two  reels,  you 
know,  kind  of  long,  but  it's  good,  and  he's  perfectly 
splendid.  Mr.  McQuair  is  that  same  type.  Where's 
he  live?  " 


138  THE  NOON-MARK 

"  Adams  Road,"  said  Nettie,  shortly.  Then  she  re- 
pented of  her  shortness,  and  added :  "  It's  about  two 
squares  from  our  house,  the  other  side  of  the  automo- 
bile place." 

"  Oh.  You've  gone  together  ever  since  you  were 
little,  haven't  you?  One  of  the  girls  said  so,  any- 
how." 

"  We've  always  known  each  other  —  that  is,  pretty 
near  always,"  Nettie  answered  her,  wondering  mean- 
while by  what  agency  a  person's  private  history  and 
concerns  become  common  property  in  the  community ; 
she  herself  never  heard  any  stories,  and  never  circu- 
lated any. 

"  She  said  he  went  with  that  North  Hill  crowd ; 
she  said  she  saw  his  name  in  Society  Jottings/7  pur- 
sued the  other  girl  suggestively.  But  Nettie  would 
not  rise  to  the  bait;  it  may  be  that  in  some  infinite  re- 
cess of  her  mind,  for  one  baffling  moment,  Society 
Jottings  embodied  the  shadow. 

Fortunately  for  her  peace,  these  misgivings  visited 
her  rarely  and  fleetingly;  she  was  a  healthy  and  ex- 
ceedingly sane  young  woman,  not  beset  by  moods  and 
nerves,  furnished  with  a  good,  strong,  active  mind 
which  was  exercised  almost  wholly  on  her  work.  No 
one  had  ever  taught  the  girl  the  value  of  concentra- 
tion; she  disciplined  herself  to  it,  intuitively.  Nor 
did  any  vision  such  as  illuminates  and  beckons  a  man 
along  the  road  to  success  illuminate  and  beckon  Nettie 
Stieffel ;  she  had  no  dreams  —  only  an  essentially 
wideawake  determination  to  be  the  best  clerk  in  the 
invoicing  department.  And  having  a  gift  of  thor- 
oughness, speed  and  accuracy  by  nature,  comple- 
mented by  resolute  drill,  she  presently  became  so  much 
the  best  clerk  in  the  invoicing  department  that  in  a 


THE  NOON -MARK  139 

very  short  while  thereafter,  a  substantial  promotion 
took  her  out  of  it  altogether.  She  went  up  to  the  vice- 
president's  room  in  the  capacity  of  private  secretary, 
with  an  increase  of  two-thirds  over  her  former  salary. 

Old  Mr.  Marklein  —  Nettie  thought  him  old  where- 
as he  considered  himself,  at  fifty-five,  in  his  prime !  — 
came  of  foreign  parentage  wTherein,  it  was  surmised, 
there  was  an  Israelitish  strain ;  he  professed,  however, 
the  Unitarian  faith,  and  for  the  rest  was  a  stout,  bald, 
well-dressed  gentleman  with  civilly  authoritative 
manners  and  a  knowledge  of  banking  which  inspired 
his  private  secretary  with  devout,  albeit  perfectly  im- 
personal, admiration.  He  had  been  with  the  Trav- 
elers' And  Traders'  all  his  life,  and  although  during 
that  time  he  must  have  had  the  adventures  and  exper- 
iences incident  to  most  busy  careers,  he  gave  the  im- 
pression of  never  having  allowed  any  of  them  to  inter- 
fere with  business.  There  was  an  invalid  wife  some- 
where in  his  background,  at  the  big  North  Hill  house, 
or  Aiken  or  Pasadena  or  some  German  spa ;  he  never 
mentioned  her,  probably  did  not  need  or  miss  her  com- 
panionship much,  or  that  of  women  generally,  though 
treating  them  all  —  to  judge  by  his  manner  towards 
Nettie  —  with  the  same  perfunctory  but  scrupulous 
courtesy.  Young  Emil,  who  had  a  desk  and  some 
nominal  position  in  his  fathers  office,  was  much  more 
appreciative. 

Nettie  scarcely  knew  of  Marklein  senior  as  much 
as  has  been  here  revealed ;  she  did  not  care  enough  to 
find  out!  And  as  for  Mr.  Marklein  himself,  his  secre- 
tary might  have  been  a  Jezebel  for  temper,  she  might 
have  been  as  ugly  as  sin,  she  might  have  had  one  foot 
in  the  grave  for  all  of  him;  the  imperative  question 
was:  was  she  a  good  secretary?     Far-fetched  as  the 


140  THE  NOON-MARK 

statement  sounds,  they  were  fundamentally  of  an 
identical  fiber,  and  got  along  together  marvelously, 
while  remaining  personally  neutral.  "  Aren't  you 
afraid  of  him?  "  was  asked  of  the  girl.  "  I'd  be.  He 
looks  as  if  he'd  fire  you  if  you  put  a  comma  in  the 
wrong  place." 

"  Well,  why  not?  "  demanded  Nettie.  "  If  I  made 
a  mistake  I'd  deserve  to  be  fired,  wouldn't  I?  No 
telling  when  I  might  make  another,  and  no  telling 
how  bad  it  might  be.  Thing  is  to  know  your  job  and 
not  make  mistakes.  I  haven't  got  any  patience  with 
people  that  can't  do  what  they're  hired  and  paid  to 
do  —  or  lazy  around  and  don't  do  it,  anyhow.  No, 
I'm  not  afraid  of  him.  I  haven't  got  anything  to  be 
afraid  about ! " 

And  likewise:  "I've  got  a  very  good  one  in  my 
office,"  said  Mr.  Marklein  in  response  to  some  inquiry 
about  women  clerks.  "  She  may  know  of  somebody 
that  you  can  get ;  but  it  will  hardly  be  as  competent 
a  young  woman  as  she  is.  Exceptional.  Best  one  I 
ever  had  —  best  I  ever  saw  or  heard  of,  in  fact!  She 
can  spell!  I  never  have  to  tell  her  anything  a  second 
time."  They  both  volunteered  these  testimonials  in 
the  same  spirit  of  impersonal  good-will  with  which 
they  would  have  reported  favorably  of  a  particularly 
satisfactory  piece  of  machinery. 

The  change  of  course  separated  Nettie  in  some  de- 
gree from  her  cousin  and  the  others ;  she  had  to  keep 
slightly  different  hours.  Millie  and  she  now  met 
practically  only  at  the  house,  and  to  see  Randon  she 
must  make  an  especial  appointment.  She  was  too  in- 
terested in  the  new  duties,  too  bent  on  learning  all 
there  was  to  learn  about  them  to  feel  isolated,  or  to 
complain.     Indeed,    her   whole    discourse    nowadays 


THE  NOON-MARK  141 

was  of  the  banking  business —  within  limits,  for  she 
was  naturally  a  cautious  talker. 

"  You'll  get  to  thinking  more  about  your  old  bank 
than  of  your  —  your  friends,  or  anybody,"  Randon 
said  to  her  with  reproach. 

"Well,  I  ought  to  be  interested;  you  can't  do  any- 
thing unless  you're  interested,  I  don't  believe.  I'd 
make  myself,  or  else  I'd  get  out  and  do  something 
else.     Wish  I'd  been  a  man !  " 

They  were  standing  on  the  Rochester  Avenue  cor- 
ner, as  usual.  Randon's  eyes  wandered  over  the  girl 
with  an  amused  tenderness  that  caused  her  to  drop 
her  own,  in  spite  of  herself;  she  wished  he  wouldn't 
look  at  her  that  way,  she  thought,  vehemently  con- 
tradicting a  certain  deep-hidden  pleasure. 

"Oh,  you  want  to  be  a  man,  do  you?     Why?'' 

"  Well,  I  could  run  myself,  for  one  thing.  Women 
always  have  to  be  run  by  somebody." 

"  Don't  you  like  the  idea  of  being  run?  Being 
taken  care  of,  and  not  having  to  work  yourself?  It  — 
it  would  depend  a  good  deal  on  the  person  —  the  man, 
is  that  it?  "  Randon  ventured  tentatively.  "  If  you 
liked  him—  ?" 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know  that  that  cuts  much  figure  in 
business.  I  don't  mind  old  Mr.  Marklein's  running, 
much,"  said  Nettie  in  a  hurry.  "  He  just  goes  right 
ahead  and  attends  to  his  own  affairs  and  expects  you 
to  attend  to  vours.     I  don't  mind  him  running  me." 

This  somewhat  bungling  attempt  to  divert  the  con- 
versation into  safer  channels  was  unexpectedly  suc- 
cessful ;  for  Randon  said  with  ever  so  faint  a  scowl : 
"  I  guess  old  Marklein's  all  right.  How  about  Emil, 
though?     See  anything  of  him?" 

"  Oh  yes,  he  comes  in  every  day.     I  can't  see  that 


142  THE  NOON-MARK 

he  does  anything,  though.  He's  never  going  to 
amount  to  much,  I  don't  believe,"  Nettie  avowed  with 
that  calamitous  honesty  which  wras  Millie's  despair. 
Not  to  seize  upon  so  good  a  chance  to  make  a  man 
jealous  was  flying  in  the  face  of  Providence,  according 
to  Millie.     Randon's  brow  cleared  on  the  instant. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know.  Emil  will  probably  get  going 
after  a  while.  He's  bright  enough,"  he  said  gener- 
ously. Noblesse  oblige!  "We  went  to  school  to- 
gether, but  I've  never  known  him  very  well." 

"  You  haven't  missed  much.  He's  not  your  kind 
—  oh,  there's  Millie  coming !  " 

Millie  was  coming,  sure  enough,  with  young  Marvin 
swaggering  alongside  her;  and  perhaps  Nettie  put 
more  warmth  than  she  intended  into  her  greeting, 
with  relief  at  escaping  a  situation  that  threatened  to 
become  acutely  sentimental.  It  seemed  to  her  that 
she  herself  wTas  incessantly  "putting  her  foot  in,"  as 
she  inwardly  phrased  it.  Randon  was  on  the  edge  of 
"  saying  something  " —  she  recoiled  with  a  kind  of 
terror  from  the  thought  that  it  was  something  she 
wanted  to  hear  —  and  instead  of  hindering  him,  she 
was  malignly  impelled  to  invite  him  on,  make  open- 
ings. Once  or  twice,  accidentally  touching  him,  she 
had  felt  him  tremble;  the  girl's  high,  clean  spirit 
shrank  from  the  fleshly  hint  —  shrank  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  her  own  answering  thrill.  For  the  first 
time  in  her  life  she  could  not  understand  herself.  Be- 
fore this  she  had  always  dealt  competently  with  men ; 
Jim  Marvin's  bold  ardors  —  and  he  was  very  much 
more  bold  and  ardent  than  the  other  young  man  had 
ever  allowed  himself  to  be  —  had  never  ruffled  her. 
She  could  handle  Jim,  she  thought  with  fine,  virginal 
arrogance;  she  would  not  halt  at  a  box  on  the  ear, 


THE  NOON-MARK  143 

should  he  presume  too  much.  It  was  impossible,  it 
was  repellent,  even  to  think  of  such  measures  in  con- 
nection with  Random  He  was  different;  in  summing 
up,  for  the  hundredth  time,  Nettie  came  to  that  same 
conclusion ;  he  was  different. 

Jim  went  on  up  to  the  house  with  the  girls ;  it  was 
nothing  to  Jim  that  Nettie's  home  should  be  cluttered, 
disorderly,  not  too  clean,  that  it  smelled  eternally  of 
clothes  being  washed  —  and,  alas,  left  unwashed  !  — 
of  fried  grease,  of  furnace-smoke,  of  Frank's  medicine ; 
nothing  to  him  that  Mrs.  Stieffel  went  about  in  an 
ancient  black  serge  skirt  with  green  and  rusty  dis- 
colorations  spotted  down  the  front  breadth,  and  a 
flannelette  dressing-sacque  insufficiently  buttoned; 
nothing  that  they  ate  in  the  kitchen,  or  that  Miss  Julia 
Stieffel  was  wont  to  make  use  of  her  needle  as  a  tooth- 
pick in  the  intervals  of  its  legitimate  employment. 
Too  much  of  Mr.  Marvin'  life  had  been  passed  in  just 
such  an  environment,  to  heed  these  superficialities;  in 
the  abstract,  they  wTere  negligible,  surely.  How,  for 
instance,  could  they  affect  Nettie?  In  Jim's  eyes, 
not  at  all.  What  her  other  admirer  would  have  felt, 
we  can  only  guess;  Randon  had  not  set  foot  in  the 
Stieffel  house  since  he  was  a  little  boy. 

If  Nettie  did  not  give  any  thought  to  that  fact, 
Millie  did,  and  her  small  shrewdness  led  her  to  an 
inference  not  very  wide  of  the  mark.  "  It  looks  funny 
Randy  McQuair  never  coming  round  evenings  to  see 
Net,  and  kind  of  keeping  off  from  all  of  us  except  her," 
she  remarked  meditatively  to  Miss  Julia.  "  I  guess  he 
just  don't  want  to  know  anything  about  how  her  home 
is ;  he  knows  it  can't  be  like  his.  Well,  I  don't  blame 
him,"  said  Miss  Aymar  philosophically.  "  Only  he 
can't  hold  in  much  longer;  he'll  have  to  ask  her  — 


144  THE  NOON-MAKK 

simply  have  to !     He's  perfectly  wobbly-eyed  whenever 
he  looks  at  her  — " 

Julia,  who  had  been  absently  half  listening  to  the 
chatter  as  she  worked,  cut  her  off  with  startling  sharp- 
ness. "  Millie!  That  ain't  a  bit  nice  way  to  talk 
about  any  nice  girl  and  nice  fella  —  about  his  eyes, 
that  way.  I  sh'd  think  you'd  be  ashamed,"  said  old 
Julia  in  unfeigned  disgust.  ct  'T  ain't  so,  anyhow.  I 
don't  b'lieve  they're  either  one  of  'em  got  any  ideas  like 
that  in  their  heads.  They're  just  good  friends  like 
they've  always  been  — " 

"  All  right !  Have  it  your  own  way !  "  said  Millie, 
with  indolent  laughter.  What  did  the  poor  old  thing 
know  about  it?  She  never  could  have  had  an  offer 
in  her  life,  Millie  thought,  but  was  too  humane,  or 
too  diplomatic,  to  say. 

" —  And  calling  him  t  Ranny  '  in  that  forward  way, 
too.  I  don't  know  what's  come  over  the  girls  now- 
adays. We'd  have  thought  it  wasn't  real  ladylike," 
Julia  went  on,  unheeding.  The  color  flamed  in  her 
withered  cheeks;  she  sewed  with  violent  gestures, 
strangely  excited. 

"Why,  that's  what  she  calls  him.  And  he  says 
*  Nettie'  to  her—" 

"Huh!    When'd  they  begin  that?" 

"  I  don't  know  —  long  ago." 

"  It  don't  mean  anything,"  said  Julia,  most  incon- 
sistently.    "  He  calls  you  '  Millie,'  don't  he?  " 

But  Millie  shook  her  head,  smilingly  mischievously 
to  behold  the  other's  discomfiture.  "  No  indeed ! 
'  Miss  Aymar ' —  just  like  that,  as  dignified  as  can  be. 
And  of  course  I  always  call  him  Mr.  McQuair  to  his 
face.  Oh  my,  no,  Aunt  Jule,  he's  not  thinking  of 
me! "  she  declared  pointedly.     "  It's  been  Nettie  right 


THE  NOON-MARK  145 

along.  You  haven't  been  on,  that's  all !  I  tell  you 
it's  got  to  the  point  now  where  he'll  have  to  speak  to 
her  or  explode.     He's  getting  simply  wobbly — " 

"Shut  up!"  Julia  screamed  at  her,  suddenly  be- 
ginning to  tremble.     She  tore  off  her  spectacles  wildly 

—  and  controlled  herself  in  time  to  lay  them  down 
with  her  usual  caution.  To  any  spectator  except  the 
amused  girl,  there  would  have  been  something  shabbily 
pathetic  in  the  action;  new  spectacles  would  cost 
seven  dollars,  and  Julie  could  not  afford  to  endanger 
seven  dollars  by  a  gust  of  temper.  Another  observer 
might  also  have  detected  that  there  was  something 
more  than  mere  temper  behind  her  outburst ;  the  poor 
old  spinster  looked  both  frightened  and  anxious. 
"  You'd  oughtn't  to  have  those  thoughts,  Millie,"  she 
said,  striving  for  a  judicial  pose.  "  It'd  make  Net 
awfully  mad  if  she  knew.     There  ain't  nothing  to  it 

—  them  going  together,  I  mean  —  there  ain't  abso- 
lutely nothing  to  it.  They're  nothing  but  a  coupla 
young  people.     When  you  get  to  my  age  — " 

"  I'll  know  a  whole  lot,  won't  I?  "  said  Millie  impu- 
dently good-humored.  But  she  narrowed  her  beau- 
tiful dark  eyes  a  little,  studying  the  older  woman 
with  new  interest.  What  under  the  shining  heavens, 
Millie  asked  herself,  was  the  matter  with  Aunt  Jule 
that  she  went  right  up  in  the  air  this  way,  at  the  idea 
of  Nettie  and  Randon —  Mr.  McQuair,  Millie  amend- 
ed inwardly  with  a  grin  —  getting  married?  He  had 
money  —  some  money,  anyhow  —  and  went  with  that 
society  crowd,  and  he  was  crazy  about  Net ;  and  as  for 
the  latter,  in  Millie's  judgment,  she  would  be  a  simp 
to  let  such  a  chance  go.  However,  Aunt  Julia  always 
had  acted  as  if  the  sun  rose  and  set  in  Nettie;  she 
probably  thought  nobody  quite  good  enough  for  her 


140  THE  NOON-MARK 

—  with  which  reflection  Miss  Aymar  shrugged  away 
the  problem. 

Her  own  affairs  were  sufficiently  absorbing  about 
this  time.     Millie  was  actually  making  extra  money 

—  money  "  on  the  side  " —  working  on  a  job  Jim  had 
got  for  her.  When  she  communicated  this  tidings  to 
Nettie,  the  other  girl's  astonishment  was  hardly  com- 
plimentary to  either  of  them. 

"  You  are?  Of  all  things!  "  she  ejaculated.  "  Jim 
fixed  it  up?  Jim?"  And  after  a  moment  during 
which  she  manifestly  was  viewing  the  matter  from 
every  angle,  without  surcease  of  wonder  and  amaze- 
ment. "  Well,  I'd  have  imagined  that  if  he  knew 
about  any  outside  job,  he'd  have  taken  it  himself. 
I'll  bet  he  needs  every  cent  he  can  get  hold  of!  "  said 
Nettie  acutely.     "  What  kind  of  work  is  it?  " 

"  Just  copying." 

"Copying?  Well,  it's  a  wonder  he  don't  do  it 
himself,"  repeated  Nettie. 

"  Why,  he  said  he  couldn't  —  he  didn't  have  time, 
or  something.  And  besides  he  said  he  felt  as  if  he'd 
like  to  throw  something  my  way,"  Millie  said. 
"  Goodness,  Net,  you  don't  mind,  do  you?  "  she  asked 
•with  ingenuous  anxiety.  "  It  isn't  anything  to  be 
jealous  about.  He  knew  you  weren't  in  a  position  to 
do  it  —  he  said  so ;  he  thought  of  you  first." 

Nettie  flushed  angrily,  but  let  that  hint  about  jeal- 
ousy pass.  Millie's  ways  of  being  disagreeable  were 
always  indirect;  she  never  would  quarrel  outspokenly 
with  anybody.  And  the  other,  almost  without  know- 
ing it,  had  long  ago  given  up  expecting  to  get  any- 
thing better  than  half-truths  —  or  half-lies  —  out  of 
her.     "  Does  Elmer  know?  "  she  inquired. 

"  Not  yet.     I  haven't  told  anybody  but  you,"  said 


THE  NOON-MARK  147 

Millie.  As  if  on  a  second  thought,  she  added  the  next 
moment:  "  I  don't  believe  I'll  tell  anybody  else,  either. 
After  all,  it's  nobody's  business  but  mine,  and  if  Elmer 
knew  he'd  get  mad  because  of  Jim  having  something 
to  do  with  it.  As  it  is,  what  he  don't  know  won't 
hurt  him.     Don't  you  tell,  will  you?  " 

The  argument  was  a  perfect  sample  of  that  simple 
cunning  she  brought  to  all  her  dealings  with  the  other 
sex,  and  Xettie  promised  silence  readily,  saying  to 
herself:  Wasn't  that  just  like  Millie? 


IX 

MRS.  HECTOR  McQUAIR  was  now  some  fif- 
teen years  older  than  when  Randon  first 
saw  her,  at  the  head  of  the  McQuair  steps 
standing  to  welcome  him  to  the  home  of  his  fathers, 
which  is  to  say,  she  was  all  of  seventy-something. 
Nevertheless  she  preserved  her  erect  carriage  and  an 
alertness  of  the  mind  and  senses  which  younger 
women  found  very  encouraging  to  behold.  She  would 
sometimes  say  with  her  confidential  air  of  refusing 
to  take  either  the  world  or  herself  seriously,  that  she 
was  reaping  the  reward  of  the  woman  whose  looks  in 
youth  have  been  of  a  dishearteningly  betwixt-and-be- 
tween  type ;  not  homely,  not  pretty,  it  was  as  if  time's 
assaults  upon  her  had  been  dispersed  or  rendered  in- 
effectual for  lack  of  definite  aim.  Beauty  is  a  shining 
mark  for  the  gentleman  of  the  scythe  and  hour-glass; 
but  Mrs.  McQuair's  complexion  had  never  been  bril- 
liant, so  its  fading  was  the  less  noticeable;  her  fair 
hair  turned  gray  with  so  slight  an  alteration  of  effect 
that  it  might  well  have  been  gray  from  the  beginning. 
In  early  middle  life  she  had  begun  to  dress  the  role 
of  age,  foregoing  bright  colors  as  carefully  as  she 
avoided  kittenish  manners;  so  that  nowadays  the  in- 
veterate black  and  considered  suitability  of  her  ward- 
robe did  not  seem  to  mark  an  era,  as  with  most 
women.  "  My,  Mis'  McQuair,  you  could  wear  most 
anything  with  that  neat  little  figger.  Just  lemme 
drape  this  a  tiny  speck  buffant,  it'd  look  so  cute," 

148 


THE  NOON-MARK  149 

Miss  Stieffel  would  plead  with  her;  but  the  old  lady 
always  shook  her  head,  smilingly  inflexible. 

The  day-dressmaker  continued  to  come  spring  and 
fall  as  for  twenty  years  past.  They  scarcely  men- 
tioned the  dates  to  each  other  any  more,  the  arrange- 
ment was  of  such  long  standing  —  two  weeks  in  April, 
two  weeks  in  October,  regular  as  the  solstice.  And 
Mrs.  McQuair  was  therefore  the  more  surprised  one 
day,  when  the  appointment  was  still  months  off,  to 
have  word  brought  up  that  Miss  Stieffel  was  down- 
stairs and  would  like  to  see  her.  Miss  Stieffel? 
Why,  it  wasn't  time  for  her  yet.     What  did  she  want? 

Ellen,  with  the  impassivity  of  a  well-mannered  serv- 
ant, didn't  know,  madame.  All  she  could  say  was 
that  Miss  Stieffel  was  waiting  in  the  kitchen.  It 
came  unaccountably  into  Mrs.  McQuair's  mind  that 
there  had  been  some  new  tragedy  in  the  family;  that 
poor  unfortunate  "  Brother  Frank  "  might  have  had 
a  second  stroke,  and  perhaps  Miss  Stieffel  had  come 
to  tell  her  that  she  would  not  be  able  to  fill  this  en- 
gagement. The  idea  that  the  visit  might  be  to  ask  for 
help  Mrs.  McQuair  did  not  entertain  for  an  instant; 
she  had  too  fine  an  understanding  of  and  respect  for 
Julia's  character.  But  that  something  serious  had 
happened  she  felt  sure,  and  surer  yet  when  the  seam- 
stress was  ushered  into  the  room.  It  was  not  that 
Julia  looked  any  different;  her  hat  was  always  on 
one  side,  the  strings  of  coarse  pepper-and-salt  hair 
whipping  in  her  eyes  and  fringing  frowzily  over  her 
collar  at  the  back  were  no  more  untidy  than  usual. 
All  the  same,  trouble  stalked  her  unmistakably  —  the 
more  certain  and  visible,  perhaps,  for  the  effort  she 
was  making  to  dominate  it.  She  had  stopped  in  on 
her  way  from  sewing  at  Mis'  Price's,  she  began  to 


150  THE  NOON-MARK 

explain  in  her  high,  saw-like  voice,  punctuating  the 
sentences  with  a  staccato  giggle ;  Mrs.  McQuair  recog- 
nized in  the  performance  a  painful  and  grotesque 
parody  of  what  Julia  would  have  called  the  "  society  " 
manner.  "  Well,  I  expect  you  think  it's  kinda  funny 
me  turning  up  ahead  of  my  date  like  this  —  tee- 
hee — !  "  She  sat  down  at  the  old  lady's  gesture  and 
immediately  got  up  again;  the  movement  was  so  in- 
dicative of  taut  nerves,  that  Mrs.  McQuair  felt  her 
own  tighten  in  sympathy.  Now,  however,  Julia  spoke 
in  a  sharp,  unnatural  voice  to  be  sure,  but  all  at  once 
abandoning  the  giggle  and  the  false  airs.  "  I  don't 
know  if  you  know  what's  been  going  on,  Mis'  Mc- 
Quair— ?"  she  said,  and  paused  in  tense  interroga- 
tion. The  other's  blank  face  answered  her.  "  I 
didn't  b'lieve  you  knew,"  said  Julia;  "  I  just  knew  he 
hadn't  said  nothing  to  you  — "  she  broke  off.  "  My 
Lord,  that  just  shows  —  that  just  shows  — "  And,  as 
Mrs.  McQuair  looked  at  her,  still  dumb,  but  with 
rising  uneasiness,  Julia  said :  "  I  mean  Mr.  Randon 
and  our  Nettie." 

There  was  a  half-second  while  Mrs.  McQuair 
focussed  her  mind.  "  Nettie.  You  know  who  I  mean, 
don't  you?  My  niece  Nettie.  That  real  pretty  girl 
you  seen  with  me  sometimes,"  said  Julia  insistently, 
taking  pains  to  avoid  the  slightest  possibility  of  mis- 
understanding. "  Nettie.  She's  about  his  own  age ; 
they  used  to  play  together,  kids."  She  raised  her 
voice  not  without  some  impatience,  as  if  the  other 
had  been  deaf.  "  Nettie,  my  niece!  I  guess  you  don't 
know  what's  been  going  on." 

Mrs.  McQuair  found  that  she  too  was  standing  up ; 
she  did  not  know  why,  or  indeed  how  she  had  gotten 
on  her  feet;  it  seemed  as  if  it  must  have  required  as 


THE  NOON-MARK  151 

difficult  an  effort  as  that  with  which  she  now  artic- 
ulated :  "  What  has  Randon  done,  Miss  Stieffel?  "  in  a 
voice  that  sounded  strange  to  her  own  ears.  The  soul 
of  the  old  Victorian  gentlewoman  quaked  with  truly 
Victorian  fears. 

Nettie's  aunt  divined  them  at  once,  but  with  irrita- 
tion rather  than  either  offense  or  sympathy.  "  Oh, 
my  goodness,  don't  go  to  thinking  that!  "  she  snapped. 
"  The  boy  ain't  done  anything.  Let  alone  he  ain't 
that  kind  of  a  boy,  Nettie's  got  too  much  sense,  her- 
self. That  ain't  what's  the  matter,  and  it  wouldn't 
ever  be,  no  difference  how  much  they  was  stuck  on 
each  other.  Seems  as  if  you'd  ought  to  know  better'n 
to  think  it  wras  that.  The  whole  trouble  is  they've 
gone  and  got  engaged,  or  as  good  as !  " 

Mrs.  McQuair  dazedly  sat  down  again ;  the  success- 
ive shocks  of  apprehension  and  relief  had  disturbed 
her  physically  more  than  she  would  have  cared  to 
admit.  She  heard  the  last  announcement  without 
being  able  to  bring  her  mind  to  bear  on  it  effectively. 

"  They've  got  engaged  to  be  married,  I  tell  you," 
Julia  repeated,  raising  her  voice  again. 

"Yes?"  said  Mrs.  McQuair,  helplessly. 

"  I  seen  it  coming  —  only  I  kep'  hoping  it  wouldn't 
come,  somehow,"  said  Julia.  "  Seems  like  I'd  oughta 
done  something  to  stop  it.  But  there  — !  "  she  made 
a  gesture  of  defeat.  "  You  can't  stop  things  like  that, 
Mis'  McQuair.     You  can't  stop  young  people." 

"  No,  I  know  that.  I  understand.  You  couldn't 
have  done  anything  —  nobody  could  have  done  any- 
thing," Mrs.  McQuair  assured  her  hastily.  It  was  the 
truth;  youth  must  be  served;  but  her  main  feeling 
was  one  of  thankfulness  that  she  could  at  last  say 
something    non-commital,    temporizing,    inoffensive! 


152  THE  NOON-MARK 

The  good  breeding  which  is  essential  humanity  had 
fettered  her. 

"  He  didn't  say  nothing  to  you,  did  he?  " 

"  No.  But  you  know,  Miss  Stieffel,  a  young  man  in 
love  —  he  doesn't  want  —  he  can't  be  expected  to  — " 

"  Oh,  he  didn't  mean  nothing  underhanded,  I 
s'pose,"  Julia  interrupted  harshly ;  "  he's  honest 
enough  —  or  he  intends  to  be.  Only  if  it  had  'a'  been 
some  other  girl,  one  of  his  own  kind,  some  girl  you 
knew  or  you  knew  the  mother  of,  anyhow  —  one  of 
these  North  Hill  families  —  why,  you'd  'a'  known 
about  it  fast  enough,  Mis'  McQuair." 

"  Somebody  else  would  have  told  me  — "  Mrs.  Mc- 
Quair began,  and  halted  in  the  unhappy  conviction 
that  that  was  not  the  right  thing  to  say.  There  was 
no  right  thing  to  say.  She  was  an  intelligent  woman, 
not  at  all  a  small-minded  woman,  but  she  surveyed 
the  figure  of  Nettie  Stieffel's  aunt  —  the  bride's  aunt, 
Mrs.  Ranclon  MeQuair's  aunt!  —  and  thought  of  the 
rest  of  the  Stieffels  with  a  ghastly  sinking  of  the 
heart.     Julia  was  speaking  again. 

"  That  just  shows,"  she  said,  with  the  emphasis  of 
doubts  confirmed.  "Him  not  telling  you,  I  mean. 
That  just  shows!  Oh,  I  don't  say  the  boy  re'lizes  it. 
He'll  tell  you  directly.  I  guess  he's  in  love  with  her 
all  right ;  and  Nettie  thinks  a  lot  of  him.  I  kinda  got 
a  notion  she  thinks  more  of  him  than  she  knows. 
They're  just  a  coupla  young  folks  like  any  other  — 
like  they  all  are.  They  can't  help  theirselves  —  fall- 
ing in  love  and  going  crazy  over  one  'nother  —  they 
can't  help  it.  But — "  she  suddenly  made  a  wild 
movement,  actually  wringing  her  hands  together  — 
her  poor,  coarse,  mottled,  knotty  hands  with  the  thick 
callouses  of  the  thimble  and  scissors.     "  My  God,  they 


THE  NOON-MARK  153 

hadn't  oughta  get  married,  Mis'  McQuair:  It  ain't 
right !     It  wouldn't  be  right !  " 

There  was  anguish  in  the  wail.  The  other  old 
woman  heard  it  with  an  emotion  no  less  profound  for 
being  compacted  of  other  emotions  which  Julia  could 
not  have  understood,  or  understanding  would  have 
resented.  No,  the  marriage  would  not  be  right;  the 
clay  pots  cannot  float  down  stream  with  the  brass 
pots;  each  to  its  own  current!  So  thought  old  Vir- 
ginia, not  with  arrogance,  rather  with  humility.  Her 
position  illogically  shamed  her.  In  what  was  she  bet- 
ter than  this  good,  upright,  sensible,  hard-working 
woman?  But  she  teas  better!  The  superiority  was 
not  to  be  expressed  in  dollars,  in  endowment  physical 
or  mental,  in  anything  tangible  or  worth  while,  but  it 
was  real,  it  existed.  She  recalled,  irrelevantly,  old 
tales  of  the  aristocrats  of  the  French  Revolution  going 
composed  and  sprightly  to  the  guillotine,  while  the 
commoner  sort  wept  and  prayed  and  raved  and  strug- 
gled. Such  gracious  courage  would  have  been  hers, 
Virginia  McQuair's ;  and  such  wretched  abandon  poor 
Julia  Stieffel's.  Even  in  this  small  crisis  Julia  was 
all  unnerved,  crying  and  screeching  and  trembling 
hvsterically.  It  seemed  to  Mrs.  McQuair  that  her 
own  provision  of  good  breeding  —  nothing  but  good 
breeding !  —  gave  her  an  unfair  advantage.  Never  to 
forget  oneself  and  yet  constantly  to  remember  others 
was  the  very  marrow  of  her  class  doctrine ;  that  finely 
conceived  discipline  ought  to  be  a  staff,  but  had  no 
business  to  become  a  weapon.  Miss  Stieffel  herself 
was  obliquely  acknowledging  its  authority. 

"  Oh,  he'd  always  treat  her  right,  I  know  that,"  she 
got  out  between  noisy  sobs.  "  Mr.  Randon's  a  perfeck 
gentleman.     And  you'd  be  just  as  nice  to  her  as  you 


154  THE  NOON-MARK 

knew  how ;  even  if  the  way  she  did  fairly  set  your  teeth 
on  edge,  you'd  act  nice  to  her,  and  try  not  to  let  her 
see.  But  Net'd  see  through  you;  she  just  couldn't 
be  happy.  And  she  couldn't  make  herself  do  like  you, 
or  think  like  you  or  anything.  She  ain't  that  kind. 
She  can  do  lots  of  things;  Net's  smart.  But  folks  like 
you  don't  need  to  be  smart  to  act  your  way.  They  get 
it  learned  into  'em  from  the  day  they're  born,  and  their 
being  smart  or  dumb  don't  make  no  difference;  they 
all  learn.  I  don't  want  to  run  down  Net  —  my  God, 
I  sh'd  hope  not !  —  but  —  Mis'  McQuair,  it  ain't  right 
them  two  sh'd  get  married.  Net'd  be  a  fish  out  of 
water  with  your  folks;  and  he  can't  go  with  hers. 
You  know  that ;  you  know  it !  " 

It  was  an  accusation;  Mrs.  McQuair  sat  defense- 
less under  it,  conscious  of  the  irony  of  her  new  desire 
to  take  up  the  young  peoples'  cause,  merely  to  quiet 
and  reassure  this  poor  woman.  The  insurmountable 
thing  was  that  this  poor  woman  was  absolutely  cor- 
rect in  her  estimates.  To  tell  her  that  American  girls 
are  very  adaptable,  that  Nettie  would  carry  off  the 
situation  famously,  that  Randon  in  marrying  her,  did 
not  marry  the  family,  might  be  a  kindness,  might 
be  an  insult,  old  Virginia  could  not  make  up  her  mind 
which!  She  had  been  humanely  endeavoring  not  to 
betray  her  own  dismay,  and  again  the  other's  honest 
unreserve  shamed  her;  sudden  rebellion  against  her 
whole  system  of  amiable  duplicities  moved  the  old 
lady.  Away  with  it!  This  was  the  hour  for  plain 
speaking.  Yet,  so  ingrained  was  the  habit  of  a  life- 
time —  and  surely  no  such  evil  habit,  when  all's  said ! 
—  that  she  could  not  force  herself  to  plain  speaking. 
"  Oh,  it's  —  it's  not  so  bad  as  all  that,  Miss  Stieffel !  " 
she  protested  vaguely. 


THE  NOON-MARK  155 

To  her  relief,  Julia  scarcely  heard  this  Laodicean 
speech  in  her  own  miserable  preoccupation;  she  got 
her  breath  with  another  sob,  and  went  on : 

"  I  guess  /  ought  to  know,  anyhow.  I  been  go- 
ing round  years  and  years  to  people's  houses  that 
you  know ;  I  been  sewing  for  that  North  Hill  crowd 
for  years  and  years.  I  guess  I  know;  I  hear  how 
they  talk.  When  that  young  fella,  that  Jack 
Chanler,  went  off  and  married  the  girl  that  her  fa- 
ther was  one  of  the  waiters  out  to  the  Country 
Club,  and  she  clerked  in  one  of  them  little  notion- 
stores  down  the  West  End,  didn't  I  hear  'em  talk? 
And  who  knows  that  girl,  or  goes  with  her  now? 
What  friend's  she  got  in  that  set?  Not  a  one! 
They  ain't  mean  to  her  —  or  they  don't  mean  to  be 
mean/'  said  Julia,  forbearingly.  "They  just  don't 
pay  any  'tention  to  her.  Why,  how  can  they?  They 
got  their  own  set  of  friends  that  they've  gone  with 
ever  since  they  was  all  kids,  and  call  each  other  by 
their  first  names  and  all.  It  wouldn't  be  in  nature  for 
'em  to  take  her  in.  But  how  d'you  s'pose  he  feels  being 
separated  from  'em  that  way?  He  must  know  it's  just 
because  of  her."  Julia  halted  for  an  instant  to  con- 
template with  a  kind  of  melancholy  triumph  the  point 
she  had  made,  and  Mrs.  McQuair  interjected  another 
futility. 

"  Well  —  er  —  that  was  different  — " 

"  Oh,  you  don't  need  to  think  you  got  to  stand  up 
for  'em,  just  so's  to  make  it  kinda  easier  for  me,"  said 
Julia,  grimly.  "  Of  course  I  know  that's  your  way. 
You  don't  ever  do  any  talking  like  some  of  the  ladies ; 
you  always  try  to  keep  everything  going  along  smooth, 
and  always  are  on  the  lookout  not  to  hurt  anybody's 
feelings.     But  you  know  you  don't  want  him  to  marry 


156  THE  NOON-MARK 

her,  Mis'  McQuair.  Why,  you  can't  want  it !  I  guess 
/  know !  " 

The  old  lady,  unable  to  choose  between  the  brutality 
of  agreeing  with  her,  and  the  dishonesty  of  contra- 
dicting, was  again  reduced  to  silence.  Her  house  of 
propriety  was  shaken  to  its  foundations. 

"  There  ain't  anything  to  do  about  it.  Anything 
you'd  do  to  try  to  stop  it  would  only  make  it  worse, 
likely,"  Julia  sighed.  "  Reason  I  come  here  and  told 
you  was  just  I  wanted  you  to  know  how  I  felt,  and  then, 
too,  I  was  afraid  you  might  get  the  idea  he  was  roped 
in,  Mis'  McQuair;  and  he  wasn't.  Net  never  crooked 
her  finger  to  get  him.  She  ain't  that  kind.  My  good- 
ness, she's  so  pretty  she  don't  have  to  do  nothing  to 
get  the  men  after  her,"  said  the  aunt  with  forlorn 
pride.  "  They  hang  round  her  all  the  time,  as  it  is. 
She  didn't  do  a  thing  to  catch  him,  Mis'  McQuair.  It 
was  all  on  his  side  — " 

"  Oh,  I'm  sure  of  that,  I  know  that !  "  said  Mrs.  Mc- 
Quair, warmly.  "  It's  just  as  you  say ;  there  doesn't 
seem  to  be  anything  to  do  about  it  —  that  is  —  unless 
—  has  Randon  spoken  to  her  father  yet?  " 

Julia  stopped  mopping  her  eyes  with  her  dingy 
handkerchief  to  stare.  "  Spoke  to  her  father?  Why, 
what  would  he  want  to  speak  to  Frank  for?  They 
ain't  anything  he  can  do  —  oh!  Oh,  you  mean  has 
he  ast  him  if  he  can  have  her?  Why,  no,  not  that  I 
know  of.  He  wouldn't  need  to,  you  know.  Net's  been 
working  for  herself  for  three-four  years." 

Mrs.  McQuair  perceived  that,  according  to  the  code 
Stieffel,  this  absolved  Nettie's  father  from  respons- 
ibility. It  had  occurred  to  her  that  a  refusal  from 
him  might  at  least  delay  proceedings.  But,  under 
the  circumstances,  any  fair-minded  person  must  con- 


THE  NOON-MARK  157 

cede  that  there  would  not  be  much  point  in  a  parental 
yes  or  no,  she  reflected,  reproving  herself  for  a  sudden 
insane  desire  to  laugh. 

"  Of  course  they  know.  Of  course  Frank  and  Mag- 
gie both  know,"  said  Julia  with  elaborate  honesty. 
"  I  guess  everybody  around  Rochester  Avenue  knows 
or  suspicions  it,  only  they  don't  anybody  say  anything. 
Net's  kinda  different  to  what  most  girls  are ;  she  won't 
have  any  talking.  She  don't  like  it.  It  ain't  that 
she's  afraid  or  ashamed  —  mercy,  no !  She  just  plain 
don't  like  talking  about  things  like  that.  She  ain't 
even  said  a  word  to  me  —  and  I'm  enough  closer  to 
her  than  her  mother's  ever  been.  Maggie  thinks  it's 
all  lovely,  anyway.  She  don't  know  anything!  "  said 
Julia  impatiently.  "  She  was  saying  the  other  day 
it  put  her  in  mind  of  one  of  them  moving-pitchers  she 
seen  where  a  prince  or  a  king  or  somebody  comes  along 
dressed  up  like  a  tramp,  you  know,  and  falls  in  love 
with  a  girl,  and  they  get  married  and  everybody  thinks 
it's  awful  till  it  comes  out  who  he  is,  and  it  ends  with 
the  two  of  'em  setting  on  a  throne  and  everybody  bow- 
ing down  to  'em  —  silly!  "  said  Julia  in  an  explosion 
of  sane  contempt,  "  She  was  going  on  about  how 
sweet  it  was,  and  I  says  to  her,  I  says : '  Well,  it  would 
be  grand  if  that  was  all  there  was  to  it.  In  a  play 
you  can  have  everything  end  up  the  way  you  want  it ; 
but  in  real  life  things  don't  ever  end  at  all.  They  just 
keep  going  on  and  on.  And  that's  what  you've  got  to 
look  out  for  when  you  do  anything  like  get  married.' 
But  there !  I  might  as  well  talk  to  the  pump.  That's 
the  kind  Maggie  is,  you  know,  Mis'  McQuair.  She 
can't  help  it.     Well  — !  " 

There  was  a  short  silence.  "  Well* —  there  it  is, 
anyhow !  "  repeated  Julia,  gave  her  eyes  one  more  dab, 


158  THE  NOON-MARK 

wiped  her  nose,  and  put  away  the  handkerchief  snap- 
ping her  bag  with  an  air  of  finality.  "  I  just  felt  you 
didn't  know  about  it,  and  somebody  had  ought  to  tell 
you.     Of  course  he  will  before  long,  but  —  but  — " 

"  I  understand,"  said  Mrs.  McQuair  quickly;  a  life- 
long practice  in  getting  at  other  peoples'  points  of 
view  enabled  her  to  see  that  in  being  first  with  the 
information,  Julia  felt  she  had  somehow  upheld  the 
honor  of  the  Stieffels.  "  Thank  you.  It  —  it  will  be 
all  right  —  er  —  it's  going  to  be  all  right  — "  she 
could  get  no  further  than  these  hazy  assurances,  but 
indeed  there  was  no  need.  Julia's  main  concern  had 
been  to  discharge  her  own  duty,  to  expose  the  situa- 
tion; and  that  done  she  was  visibly  feeling  the  peace 
that  is  one  of  the  reactions  to  calamity. 

She  went;  and  Mrs.  McQuair  spent  the  remainder 
of  the  day  wondering  whether  she  had  better  write  to 
the  relatives  and  get  advice  or  let  matters  drift,  count- 
enance the  business  or  treat  it  with  indifference,  speak 
to  Randon  or  wait  for  him  to  speak  to  her?  There 
were  moments  when  she  found  herself  refusing  to  take 
it  seriously;  and  other  moments  when  the  vision  of 
Nettie  Stieffel  —  Nettie  McQuair !  —  presiding  at  her 
table  overwhelmed  her.  So  this  was  the  outcome  of 
Randon's  subtly  flattering  asseverations  about  not 
marrying  until  he  could  secure  some  one  like  herself, 
the  old  lady  thought  with  ironic  amusement.  She  did 
not  know  Nettie  at  all,  but  it  was  unthinkable  that 
Miss  Julia's  niece  could  be  in  the  least  like  Mrs. 
Hector  McQuair.  But  after  all,  why  should  it  not  be 
for  the  best?  The  girl  might  be  a  very  nice  girl;  if 
she  resembled  her  aunt,  she  had  a  good  mind,  a  good 
heart,  whatever  her  manners  were  —  Mrs.  McQuair 
groaned  in  spirit  When  she  remembered  Miss  Stieffel's. 


THE  NOON-MARK  159 

In  vain  she  told  herself  that  minds  and  hearts  are 
the  things  that  count;  the  sardonic  truth  is  that  we 
must  reckon  with  manners,  too. 

Not  the  slightest  of  her  anxieties  was  the  pros- 
pective interview  with  Randon  that  evening;  but  lo, 
it  went  off  not  ill!  She  heard  him  come  home;  and, 
as  usual,  they  met  at  the  dinner-table  —  that  ineffably 
well-bred  dinner-table  with  its  pretty  and  unostenta- 
tious formalities.  What  sort  of  a  dinner-table  would 
Mrs.  Randon  McQuairs  be?  Mrs.  Hector  wore  her 
black  velvet  dress  with  the  collar  and  cuffs  of  delicate 
needlework;  older  McQuairs  looked  on  sedately  from 
the  family  canvases,  McQuairs  with  whom  Randon's 
tall  and  straight  and  slender  presence  consorted  well. 
The  weird  fancy  visited  his  grandmother's  mind  that 
perhaps  in  a  workingman's  shirt-sleeves,  instead  of  a 
dinner-jacket,  tired,  greasy  and  unshaven,  he  might 
not  look  like  a  McQuair  at  all !  Yet  being  a  gentle- 
man is  not  a  matter  of  dinner-jackets  and  ancestors. 

"  Miss  Stieffel  was  here  this  afternoon,"  she  said,  at 
dessert. 

Randon  started  ever  so  slightly,  and  looked  at  her. 

"  Yes,  she  told  me,"  said  Mrs.  Hector. 

He  went  white,  and  red  again.  Not  for  worlds 
would  either  one  of  them  have  betrayed  any  undue 
emotion ;  their  somewhat  antique  gentility  abhorred  a 
scene.  But  Mrs.  McQuair,  for  her  part,  discovered 
that  she  actually  felt  no  emotion  save  a  desperate  de- 
sire to  get  this  passage  over  and  done  with! 

"  I  was  going  to  tell  you  myself  this  evening,"  Ran- 
don said. 

"  Of  course,  of  course.  I  don't  think  she  meant  to 
be  —  er  —  officious,  or  had  any  idea  of  —  um  —  inter- 
fering —  putting  in  her  oar,  that  is.     She  only  seemed 


160  THE  NOON-MARK 

to  want  to  talk  about  it  —  very  naturally.  She 
seems  to  be  devoted  to  —  to  Nettie,"  said  Mrs.  Mc- 
Quair,  forcing  the  name  out  resolutely.  "  I  was  a 
little  surprised  —  I  found  that  I  hadn't  realized  you 
were  old  enough  to  be  married.  I  was  thinking  of  you 
as  a  small  boy  still  — "  said  the  old  lady  — "  I'm  being 
too  fluent/'  she  advised  herself  in  a  panic. 

"  I  want  to  bring  her  to  see  you.  She  wants  to  see 
you  —  but  you  know  she's  busy  all  day  long  in  an 
office  — " 

"  Perhaps  some  Sunday  afternoon?  But  wouldn't 
you  like  me  to  ask  her  to  dinner,  Randon?  " 

"  Why,  yes  —  I  —  that's  ever  so  nice  of  you.  I'll 
tell  her.     I  —  she's  very  —  I'm  sure  you'll  like  her  — " 

It  was  done !  Mrs.  Hector,  ruled  by  elder  fashions, 
had  been  on  the  point  of  saying  that  she  would  call 
on  the  Stieffels,  but  though  she  had  never  seen  the 
house  or  a  single  Stieffel  except  Nettie  and  the  aunt, 
her  experienced  humanity  warned  her  against  the  sug- 
gestion. 


POSSIBLY,  if  they  had  been  asked,  neither  Ran- 
don  nor  Nettie  could  have  told  when  or  where 
or  even  how  the  question  that  had  been  in  both 
their  minds  for  longer  than  they  knew  had  all  at  once 
been  settled.  The  young  man  had  imagined  a  dozen 
forms  of  words,  had  even  tried  to  coach  himself  in 
some  of  them ;  he  forgot  every  one  when  the  time  came. 
In  fact,  for  all  his  scheming,  the  time  somehow  came 
unexpectedly;  nothing  happened  according  to  sched- 
ule. They  were  taking  a  walk  out  towards  the 
country,  perhaps  in  the  neighborhood  of  that  little 
place  called  Wayne's,  beyond  the  new  subdivisions, 
amongst  open  fields,  the  trolley-cars  left  far  behind, 
one  or  two  factory  chimneys  on  the  horizon ;  and  they 
came  to  a  fence.  He  was  helping  her  over  it,  need- 
lessly, for  Nettie  was  as  active  as  himself,  and  told 
him  so.  "  Never  mind.  I'm  all  right.  You  don't 
have  to.  I  can  get  along  better  without  you,"  she 
said,  a  little  peremptorily  in  sudden  nervousness,  try- 
ing to  withdraw  her  hand.  Randon  could  only  re- 
member rejoining  with  difficulty  and  huskiness  that 
he  couldn't  get  along  without  her —  than  which  no 
speech  could  have  been  more  banal;  but  Heaven  is 
witness  that  the  average  lover's  eloquence  seldom  dis- 
plays originality !  He  had  to  put  out  his  strength  to 
hold  her  hand ;  it  afterwards  seemed  to  him  that  in  the 
violence  of  his  own  sensations,  he  must  have  been 
rough  with  her,  but  she  said  not.     "  Any wav,  I  —  I 

1G1 


162  THE  NOON-MARK 

didn't  mind  —  really  mind  —  not  even  when  I  was 
trying  to  get  away  from  yon !  "  she  confessed  with  that 
directness  he  thought  so  adorable.  She  was  pink  as 
a  rose,  and  would  not  look  at  him,  though. 

They  wandered  about  for  a  blissfully  foolish  hour 
—  or  more  or  less,  he  did  not  know  —  and  finally 
brought  up  at  the  Fairmount  Heights  Interurban 
Terminal  Station,  without  having  the  least  idea  of 
how  they  had  got  there.  Nettie,  however,  decreed 
that  since  they  were  on  the  spot,  they  had  better  take 
the  next  car  back  to  town ;  she  was  the  practical  one ; 
the  infatuated  young  man  would  have  strayed  along 
aimlessly  forever.  His  thoughts  lingered  on  that 
practical  streak  of  hers  with  fond  amusement,  even 
while  he  was  conscious  somewhere  within  his  being 
of  a  faintly  jarring  note;  he  had  spoken  of  a  ring  — 
the  ring  —  and  it  was  her  answer  that  jarred;  the 
slightest  possible  cross-vibration  —  yet  there  it  was ! 
"  Oh,  don't  go  getting  me  any  ring.  It  would  cost  a 
lot,  and  we  ought  to  save.  They  don't  mean  anything; 
they're  just  for  looks.  You  could  do  a  good  deal  with 
that  money."  No  doubt  about  it,  Nettie  was  prac- 
tical! It  was  funny,  enchantingly  funny,  Randon 
stoutly  maintained  to  himself. 

On  her  side,  Nettie,  even  had  she  been  gifted  with 
the  dramatic  imagination,  would  not  have  allowed 
herself  to  exercise  it  manufacturing  prospective  cir- 
cumstances and  speeches;  a  prudence,  inborn  as  it  was 
ruthless,  stamped  any  such  proceedings  as  silly. 
How  could  she  tell  what  was  going  to  happen?  Per- 
haps he  didn't  mean  anything  after  all.  Men  do  and 
say  all  kinds  of  things  without  meaning  anything.  A 
girl  simply  had  to  wait  for  a  man;  that  was  the  worst 
of  being  a  girl,  that  having  to  sit  around  and  wait 


THE  NOON-MARK  1G3 

until  somebody  else  made  up  their  minds!  And,  if 
yon  were  to  ask  her,  Nettie  Stieffel,  she  would  just  as 
lief  tell  you  outright  that  she  couldn't  see  what  under 
the  shining  heavens  any  man  wanted  to  get  married 
for,  anyhow.  She  wouldn't,  if  she  were  a  man.  At 
any  rate,  no  use  getting  all  ready  for  something  that 
might  never  happen;  you  can't  be  sure  of  anything  in 
this  world.  With  which  appallingly  sensible  reflec- 
tions, she  would  resolutely  shut  Ranny  McQuair  out 
of  her  mind,  and  apply  herself  to  work.  And  it  is  a 
fact  that  while  Randon  mooned  away  not  a  little  of 
his  time  over  Judge  Stanley's  papers,  and  did  not 
hear  when  he  was  spoken  to,  and  forgot  inexcusably, 
and  absently  did  the  same  thing  twice  over,  and  in 
brief  displayed  all  the  well-known  symptoms  of  his 
malady,  Nettie  stayed  along  at  her  desk  and  type- 
writer as  efficiently  as  ever,  without  the  loss  of  a 
minute  either  of  her  employer's  time  or  her  own. 

At  home  the  news  was  variously  received,  though  in 
no  case  with  much  excitement.  Marrying  and  giving 
in  marriage  was  a  far  more  literal  and  simple  mat- 
ter in  the  Stieffel  circle  than  in  others  both  above  and 
below  it  —  if  any  such  exist.  Aunt  Julia  kept  a 
boding  silence.  Mrs.  Maggie  wept  a  little  and  recited 
sentimental  excerpts  from  her  reading  and  from  the 
film  dramas,  to  Nettie's  ill-controlled  exasperation. 
Her  father  said :  "  Well  now,  that's  real  nice.  I  guess 
he's  a  nice  young  fellow.  Only  we'll  miss  you,  Net. 
I  will,  anyhow,  playing  dominoes  with  me,  evenings." 
Poor  Frank  had  declined  visibly  of  late,  whether  in  the 
natural  progress  of  the  disease,  or  from  advancing 
age,  or  the  monotony  of  confinement ;  but  it  was  as 
if  his  mind  had  receded  rather  than  broken  down ;  he 
was  not  childish,  and  not  querulous  even  in  moments 


164  THE  NOON-MARK 

of  suffering.  It  should  be  said  to  the  credit  of  the 
family  that  every  one  of  them  from  twenty-three-year- 
old  Nettie  the  first-born,  down  to  little  Dave  who  was 
ten  and  the  final  arrival,  though  they  had  all  inevit- 
ably ceased  to  regard  their  father  as  anything  but  a 
sad  sort  of  chattel,  nevertheless  behaved  towards  him 
with  unwavering  patience  and  good-humor.  It  was 
not  in  Maggie  to  be  unkind  to  anybody ;  and  moreover 
the  misfortune  elevated  her  to  the  sympathetic  admir- 
ation of  her  society,  and  excused  a  vast  deal  of  what 
might  otherwise  have  been  condemned  for  slovenliness, 
laziness,  slipshod  management.  She  would  like  to 
keep  things  nicer,  and  do  more  for  the  higher  life  of 
the  children  —  she  felt  so  cut  off  from  the  higher  life 

—  but  anybody  could  see  how  tied  she  was! 
Torridly  sentimental  episodes  punctuated  by  pro- 
posals of  marriage  being  no  novelty  to  Miss  Mildred 
Aymar,  that  young  lady  evinced  little  curiosity  about 
the  details  of  her  cousin's  engagement,  though  she 
took  a  friendly  satisfaction  at  hearing  of  it.  "  Looked 
as  if  he  never  would  get  there  for  a  while,  he's  so  shy, 
and  you  acted  so  stiff  and  stand-off-ish  right  along," 
she  observed  candidly.  "  Here  recently,  though,  I 
was  beginning  to  feel  pretty  sure  something  would 
happen.  How  did  he  do,  Net?  Work  up  to  it  grad- 
ually, or  just  blurt  the  whole  thing  out  at  once?  " 

"If  I  told  you,  you'd  know,  wouldn't  you?" 
retorted  Nettie,  in  as  indifferently  jocular  a  tone  as 
she  could  compass,  but  coloring  painfully.  Within 
her  unromantic  soul  there  dwelt  somewhere  a  fine, 
boy -like  sense  of  decency  and  fairness  that  forbade  her 
relishing  this  sort  of  discussion,  commonly  the  most 
relished  by  her  sex.     If  it  was  her  affair,  it  was  also 

—  and  somehow  very  much  more  —  her  lover's  affair; 


THE  NOON-MARK  165 

there  was  a  point  of  honor  involved ;  she  felt  that  he 
would  not  degrade  their  bright  experience  with  cheap 
talk,  and  should  she?  For  that  matter,  the  girl's 
clean  mind  had  always  rebelled  at  this  hole-and-corner 
gabbling,  in  which  she  detected  something  sordid  and 
sensual.  No  use,  however,  she  argued,  to  fly  out  at 
Millie;  that  would  only  insure  further  teasing!  And, 
in  fact,  Millie  accepted  her  gay  reticence  without  tak- 
ing offense  or  persisting  mischievously. 

"  Oh,  all  right,  if  you  don't  want  to  tell,"  she  said 
with  tolerance.  "  After  all,  there  never  is  very  much 
to  tell,  anvhow.  I  alwavs  think  love-scenes  in  novels 
or  on  the  stage  aren't  the  least  bit  true  to  life.  The 
people  that  write  'em  can't  know  much  about  it.  They 
always  make  the  man  do  the  greatest  lot  of  talking, 
and  the  girl  generally  just  stands  first  on  one  foot 
and  then  on  the  other  waiting  for  him  to  get  through, 
and  looks  down  and  whispers  —  too  silly !  Half  the 
time  when  a  man's  trying  to  propose  he  can  hardly 
say  a  thing  —  just  stammers  and  swallows  and  fidgets. 
If  a  girl  didn't  kind  of  boost  him  along,  he'd  never  get 
it  said."  She  appraised  herself  thoughtfully  in  the 
bureau-glass,  arranging  a  whorl  of  hair  over  each  ear 
with  deft  and  painstaking  fingers.  "  Seems  as  if  you 
might  just  as  well  have  let  him  get  a  ring,  Net,  'T 
isn't  as  if  he  was  poor.     It  wouldn't  have  broken  him." 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  want  to  be  bothered  with  people  mak- 
ing remarks,"  said  Nettie,  again  selecting  the  argu- 
mentum  ad  Millie. 

"  Well,  that's  so,  too,"  the  latter  agreed  not  without 
a  certain  surprised  approval ;  she  scarcely  expected  so 
sound  a  judgment  on  this  particular  point  from  Nettie. 
"  Everybody  notices  a  diamond  ring  the  first  thing. 
A  girl  might  as  well  be  tagged  with  the  man's  name 


166  THE  NOON-MARK 

and  address.  You  can't  have  any  fun  with  the  other 
men,  unless  you  take  the  ring  off,  and  then  he's  forever 
fussing  to  know  why  you  don't  wear  it.  I  keep  the 
set  of  mine  turned  round  on  the  inside  all  the  time 
except  when  Elmer's  around  —  and  I  don't  believe 
that's  so  good  for  the  stone,  either.  You're  liable  to 
take  hold  of  something  too  rough  and  loosen  it  or 
catch  it  in  something  and  pull  it  out,  and  besides  it 
gets  dirtier."  Millie  inspected  her  own  badge  of 
betrothal  seriously.  Elmer  bought  it  of  a  traveling- 
man  temporarily  hard-up,  for  a  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  dollars;  it  had  cost  originally  three  hundred,  the 
traveling-man  said,  and  Millie  verified  this  statement 
by  taking  it  to  a  jeweller  to  be  valued  the  day  after 
Elmer  presented  it  to  her.  "  Oh,  well,  he'll  give  you 
lots  of  things,  anyhow,  so  I  guess  you  don't  need  to 
worry  with  a  ring,"  she  said,  returning  to  her  theme. 
"  And  then,  not  having  one  will  make  it  easier  for  you 
to  break  it  off  with  him,  if  you  ever  feel  like  it.  One 
can't  tell."  Prudent  doctrine,  and,  one  would  have 
supposed,  after  Nettie's  own  heart;  but  why  was  it, 
then,  that  she  recoiled  to  hear  it  from  the  other  girl? 
She  did  not  know  of  the  elder  Miss  Stieffel's  visit 
to  Mrs.  McQuair;  nobody  ever  knew  for  Julia  never 
told.  The  poor  old  maid  felt  guilty  of  a  hideous  dis- 
loyalty, yet  wretchedly  assured  that  she  had  done 
right.  "  The  best  you  can  do,  it's  a  lottery  getting 
married,  like  people  say.  I'm  sure  I  hope  you  and 
him'll  get  along  all  right,  Nettie,"  she  finally  forced 
herseK  to  say,  cowering  inwardly  before  the  stern 
accusation  of  two-facedness  brought  by  her  own  con- 
science. What  made  it  worse  was  that  Nettie  wel- 
comed this  tepid  felicitation  with  a  kiss  and  some- 
thing very  much  like  tears  in  her  proud  eyes  —  she 


THE  NOON-MARK  167 

who  so  seldom  betrayed  any  feeling,  and  from  whom 
caresses  were  a  rarity.  The  spinster  sensed  strong 
affection,  perhaps  a  generous  pity  in  that  impulsive 
embrace ;  it  was  as  if  this  young  thing  wanted  to  share 
her  happiness  with  her  aunt's  deprived  and  lonesome 
age.  "  And  me  doing  my  best  to  stop  the  whole  thing, 
all  the  time  I'1  thought  Julia  in  self-abasement;  she 
may  have  shed  some  tears  herself,  the  hard,  un- 
wonted tears  of  age,  turning  restlessly  on  her  pillow. 
In  a  few  days  Randon,  with  a  slightly  anxious  smile 

though  to  save  his  soul  he  could  not  have  told  what 

his  anxiety  was  about —  brought  Nettie  a  neat, 
square,  indescribably  natty  white  envelope  addressed 
to  Miss  Nettie  Stieffel  in  Mrs.  McQuair's  handwriting, 
which  itself  exhibited  a  kind  of  neat  dash.  She  was 
sure  that  Miss  Stieffel  would  forgive  the  informality 
of  this  invitation ;  it  was  one  of  the  privileges  of  old 
age  to  exact  that  youth  should  wait  upon  it,  and  she 
herself  seldom  went  anywhere  nowadays.  Would 
Nettie  come  and  take  dinner  Thursday  evening  at 
eight?  And  as  it  was  also  incidental  —  most  un- 
luckily —  to  her  years  not  to  know  many  young  peo- 
ple, would  Miss  Aymar  and  Mr.  Hands  overlook  cere- 
mony and  come  too,  so  that  their  little  party  might  be 
better  balanced?  She  was  very  sincerely,  Virginia 
Carey  McQuair. 

"  Why,  sure,  I'll  go  —  we'll  all  go.  I  know  Millie  d 
like  to,"  Nettie  said.  "My  goodness,  I  wouldn'^t 
think  of  her  coming  to  see  me,  at  her  age.  She  didn't 
need  to  worry  about  that.  You  tell  her  we'll  come, 
will  you?     She  doesn't  want  me  to  write?'1 

"  Well-er  —  I  don't  suppose  it  makes  any  real  dif- 
ference —  "  stuttered  Randy  uneasily;  oddly  enough, 
he  had  in  mind  not  what  Mrs.  Hector  McQuair  would 


168  THE  NOON-MARK 

think  or  expect  or  consider  due  her,  but  what  the 
other  McQuairs,  the  Uncle  Johns,  the  Cousin  Doro- 
thys —  especially  the  Cousin  Dorothys  —  would  think 
and  expect  and  consider  due  an  old  lady,  virtually  the 
head  of  their  clan.  All  at  once,  they  appeared  to  him 
as  mortally  punctilious  people  —  foolishly  punctilious. 

"  Well,  you  tell  her,  then.  It  doesn't  seem  worth 
while  writing  letters  back  and  forth  when  we  live 
right  on  the  same  square  almost."  So  Randon  car- 
ried the  word  home. 

To  Nettie's  surprise  Millie  met  the  invitation  not 
only  without  enthusiasm,  but  with  a  very  dubious  pout 
indeed.  "'Nice  of  her  to  ask  us!'"  she  repeated 
after  Nettie  almost  snappishly.  "Why,  don't  you 
see  she  thought  she  had  to  ask  us?  That's  all  stuff 
about  not  knowing  any  young  people;  she  just  don't 
want  to  ask  any  of  his  friends,  but  she  knew  she  had 
to  have  somebody  beside  just  yourselves,  or  it  might 
look  queer.  If  we  go  we  ought  to  wear  low-neck,  and 
Elmer  ought  to  have  on  a  dress-suit.  He  could  rent 
one,  I  suppose,  but  I'd  like  to  know  where  I'm  going 
to  get  a  low-neck,"  said  Millie,  the  most-serious 
trouble  coming  to  the  surface.  "  I've  a  good  notion 
to  write  her  and  say  we  can't  come  —  Elmer  and  my- 
self, I  mean.  I  could  say  we  had  a  previous  engage- 
ment. Here,  let  me  look  at  her  letter  again.  It 
ought  to  be  put  kind  of  the  same  way  she  does  —  " 
Millie  reached  for  Mrs.  McQuair's  note,  and  applied 
herself  to  a  study  much  more  thorough  and  concen- 
trated than  she  had  ever  bestowed  on  her  lessons  at 
school!  Nettie  witnessed  the  performance  with 
amusement,   perplexity  and  annoyance  commingled. 

"  Well,  of  all  things !  "  she  exclaimed.     "  What  are 
you  fussing  about?     Why,  I'm  just  going  to  wear  my 


THE  NOON-MARK  169 

white  voile,  and  what's  the  matter  with  you  wearing 
yours?     What's  your  idea  about  being  so  diked  out?  " 

"  Oh,  you  don't  know  how  people  do !  "  said  Millie 
petulantly. 

"  Anyhow,  I  guess  you  and  Elmer'll  have  to  go,  Mil- 
lie. I  told  her  you  would,  and  she'll  know  you're  just 
making  an  excuse  to  get  out  of  it.  You  wouldn't  want 
to  have  her  feelings  hurt  —  an  old  person  like  her." 

"  Eo,  much  her  feelings' d  be  hurt!"  said  Millie 
with  scornful  skepticism ;  and  she  reiterated  her  con- 
viction :  a  I  don't  believe  you  ever  will  know  how 
people  do,  Net !  "     Perhaps  she  was  right. 

However,  being  shrewdly  aware  of  her  own  limita- 
tions in  the  same  respect,  namely :  knowledge  of  how 
people  did,  Miss  Aymar  concluded  to  let  matters 
stand;  better  to  go  and  be  done  with  it  than  to  try  to 
write  a  note  and  do  or  say  the  wrong  thing  in  the 
wrong  way.  Millie  felt  herself  equal  to  any  situation, 
no  matter  how  unaccustomed,  and  she  had  a  curiously 
exact  estimate  of  the  value  of  her  two  assets,  youth 
and  real  beauty.  Inexperience  and  lack  of  sophis- 
tication—  these  are  not  Millie's  own  phrases,  but  a 
free  translation  —  would  show  unmistakably  in  a 
note,  for  instance,  whereas  few  were  the  positions 
wherein  a  girl  could  not  make  a  success  — "  get  away 
with  it  "  were  Millie's  actual  words  —  by  merely  keep- 
ing still  and  looking  pretty.  Again,  perhaps  she  was 
right. 

No  such  considerations  beset  Nettie.  She  was  a 
little  excited  at  the  prospect  of  meeting  Randon's 
grandmother,  as  was  natural  to  any  girl  about  to  be 
paraded  before  her  betrothed's  family;  but  as  to 
fright  or  self-consciousness  — !  Nettie  knew  no  such 
emotions.     She  remembered  Mrs.  McQuair  from  child- 


170  THE  NOON-MARK 

ish  days,  and  had  always  thought  her  a  "  sweet  old 
lady."  Was  she  not  consistently  as  nice  as  could  be 
to  Aunt  Julia?  Many  times  the  latter  had  testified 
to  it.  Many  times  too  the  McQuair  maids  had  treated 
Nettie  to  hot  doughnuts  in  the  kitchen ;  the  fact  that 
the  same  maids  were  about  to  wait  on  her  in  the 
drawing-room  did  not  seem  to  her  cause  for  embar- 
rassment, though  they  called  her  by  her  first  name, 
and  her  Aunt  Julia  often  sat  down  to  a  cup  of  tea 
with  them.  She  hurried  home  from  the  bank  two 
afternoons  in  succession  to  press  and  furbish  up  the 
white  voile;  but  when  the  evening  came,  gave  no 
more  and  no  less  attention  to  her  toilette  than  usual. 
She  was  always  trim,  clean,  fresh,  crisp.  Julia  hov- 
ered around  her  nervously,  but  without  any  sugges- 
tions. "  Let  the  child  go  looking  like  her  natural  self. 
Mis'  McQuair  may  as  well  know  all  there  is  to  know 
about  her,  first  as  last !  "  the  aunt  thought  fiercely. 
Mrs.  McQuair,  at  that  same  moment,  was  rolling  her 
gray  hair  up  in  the  pretty  puffs  of  her  regulation  eve- 
ning coiffure,  and  wondering  if  her  guests  would  eat 
with  their  knives?  The  picture  brought  a  kind  of  dis- 
mayed smile ;  then  she  sighed.  "  Poor  Ranny !  "  she 
said  to  herself. 

But,  after  all,  this  redoubtable  dinner  went  off  very 
well  —  on  the  surface,  at  all  events.  The  girls  ar- 
rived promptly,  escorted  by  Elmer  looking  fully  as  nice 
in  his  Palm  Beach  suit  as  Randon  in  summer  white 
flannels.  Mrs.  McQuair  and  Nettie  met  without  cool- 
ness but  without  gush,  to  the  vast  relief  of  the  older 
lady ;  there  was  no  lack  of  self-possession  on  any  side. 
The  dinner  was  good,  and  everybody's  table-manners 
irreproachable ;  and  the  wine  and  the  flowers  and  the 
ancestors  excited  no  ingenuously  comic  remark,  as 


THE  'NOON-MARK  171 

Mrs.  McQuair  had  more  than  half  expected.  To  be 
sure  there  were  occasional  threatened  breaks  when  she 
kept  the  small-talk  going  by  main  strength  —  "  But 
you  have  to  do  that  sometimes  no  matter  in  what  com- 
pany you  are,"  she  thought.  "  Dear  me,  I've  been  at 
table  when  people  were  entertaining  some  celebrity, 
and  it  was  all-hands-to-the-pumps  every  few  min- 
utes! "  This  generation  of  Stieffels  was  an  immeas- 
urable improvement  on  the  preceding  one,  she  decided, 
and  one  could  not  cavil  at  Randon's  taste  in  looks. 
But  with  wmat  she  felt  to  be  an  unwarrantable  per- 
versity, the  old  lady  found  herself  wishing  that,  if  he 
must  go  out  of  his  class,  he  had  selected  the  other 
girl !  Nettie  with  her  brevity,  her  directness,  her 
obvious  indifference  to  small  ornamental  conventions, 
was  not  nearly  so  promising  a  Mrs.  Randon  McQuair 
in  perspective  as  the  little  Aymar  —  what  was  her 
name?  —  Millie.  That  girl  could  be  trained;  some- 
thing could  be  made  out  of  her,  thought  Virginia. 
Without  doubt,  she  was  nothing  but  a  sharp-eyed, 
terrifically  sophisticated  old  worldling;  but  to  do  her 
justice,  she  honestly  had  Randon's  happiness  at  heart. 
Queerly  enough,  something  like  the  same  thought 
had  crossed  Millie's  innocent  young  mind,  too !  Once 
or  twice  during  the  evening  —  and  who  knows  how  of- 
ten afterwards?  —  savage  impatience  gripped  her. 
What  luck  Nettie  had,  and  how  little  she  appreciated 
it!  It  was  maddening  to  see  such  a  chance  thrown 
away  on  a  person  wdio  didn't  care  about  it,  didn't 
even  know  it  was  a  chance.  Millie  was  not  at  all  in 
love  with  Randon  McQuair  —  she  was  not  of  the 
temperament  to  fall  too  much  in  love  with  anybody 
—  but  she  liked  him  quite  enough  to  marry  him ;  she 
would  have  liked  any  young  man  in  the  same  position 


172  THE  NOON-MARK 

enough  to  marry  him.  The  position  was  what  cap- 
tured her  fancy.  Not  one  single  detail  of  that  well- 
appointed  meal  escaped  Millie,  not  one  single  feature 
of  the  life  of  the  old  house  so  far  as  it  was  uncon- 
sciously revealed  to  her  in  these  two  or  three  hours. 
Her  cheap  vocabulary  furnished  only  the  word 
"  stylish  "  with  which  to  define  the  unassuming  court- 
liness of  its  atmosphere,  but  she  was  acute  enough  to 
perceive  that  the  mere  possession  of  money  could  not 
attain  to  this  stylishness;  some  other  attribute  dis- 
tinguished the  McQuair  home  from  the  homes  of 
Rochester  Avenue.  Millie  did  not  —  in  fact,  could 
not  —  recognize  this  attribute  to  be  authentic  gen- 
tility; she  set  it  down  as  what  a  more  subtle  tongue 
than  ours  has  poignantly  labelled  savoir  faire.  She 
watched  Mrs.  McQuair  and  took  notes.  "  That  old 
lady  knows  it  all.  There  isn't  a  thing  could  happen 
that  would  feaze  her.  If  Uncle  Frank  was  to  come 
rolling  in  here  this  minute  in  his  chair,  without  any 
collar  on,  and  egg  spilled  all  down  his  chin,  she'd 
know  something  to  say  that  would  pass  it  all  off  as 
smooth  as  you  please,  and  make  everybody  feel  com- 
fortable. Well,  she  ought  to  know  at  her  age,  with 
all  she's  seen.  I'll  bet  I  will  too,  by  the  time  I'm 
seventy."  Never  before  in  her  life  had  Miss  Aymar 
encountered  an  old  person  of  either  sex  whom  she 
would  have  deigned  to  imitate,  but  then  and  there 
she  resolved  to  model  her  manners  in  future  on  Mrs. 
McQuairs,  making  allowance  for  the  difference  in 
their  years,  of  course.  And  who  will  undertake  to 
say  the  young  woman  was  not  well-advised,  whatever 
shoddy  ambition  governed  her?  "  Net  is  the  dumb- 
est! "  she  said  to  herself,  almost  with  contempt. 
"  Listen  at  her  telling  all  that  long  story  about  the 


THE  NOON-MARK  173 

phony  note  they  discounted  the  other  day,  and  what 
Mr.  Marklein  said  and  what  the  clearing-house  people 
said  and  all  the  rest  of  it!  As  if  Mrs.  McQuair 
wanted  to  hear  all  that  stuff!  She  don't  know  one 
piece  of  bank-paper  from  another,  and  don't  care  to 
know;  she  just  sits  and  smiles  and  looks  interested 
—  and  all  the  time  she's  ready  to  yawn  her  head  off. 
Why  isn't  Net  more  on?  She  doesn't  need  to  talk; 
she  doesn't  need  to  open  her  mouth.  It  would  be  a 
whole  lot  better  if  she'd  just  sit  still  and  look  at 
Randon,  and  act  kind  of  shy  and  pretty  —  " 

"  You're  not  so  much  interested  in  business  as 
your  cousin,  I'm  afraid,  Miss  Aymar,"  said  Mrs.  Mc- 
Quair agreeably. 

"  Well,  I'm  terribly  dumb  about  figures  and  things, 
you  know,''  said  Millie  with  a  replica  of  her  hostess' 
own  smile,  deprecating  and  humorous. 

It  was  perfect,  and  old  Virginia  looked  at  her  be- 
nevolently in  strong  approval.  Why  couldn't  it  have 
been  this  one? 


XI 

A  LAST  century  writer  of  some  reputation  once 
remarked :  "  Vanity  of  vanities !  Which  of 
us  has  his  desire,  or  having  it  is  satisfied?  " 
And  another  at  a  slightly  later  date  voiced  somewhat 
the  same  conclusion  regarding  the  nature  of  man  when 
he  pointed  out  that  there  are  only  two  tragedies  in 
life,  one:  not  getting  what  we  want;  and  the  other: 
getting  it.  Mr.  Randon  McQuair,  during  this  period 
was  undoubtedly  feeling  the  force  of  these  philosoph- 
ical deductions,  though  he  would  have  vigorously 
denied  that  there  was  any  truth  in  either  of  them. 
How  could  he  be  restless  or  dissatisfied,  he  who  was 
the  luckiest,  the  most  enviable  of  men,  he  to  whom  had 
just  been  granted  his  dearest  wish?  The  course  of 
true  love  was  running  smooth  as  oil.  Nettie  was  as 
lovely  as  ever;  those  gifts  besides  beauty  which  he  so 
admired  were  as  obvious  as  ever;  she  had  nowise 
changed  towards  him  unless  in  a  new  and  delightful 
acquiescence  which  should  have  brimmed  his  cup  of 
wholesome  happiness.  Nobody  had  raised  any  ob- 
jections to  the  match,  the  family  offered  no  criticisms, 
Mrs.  McQuair  was  kindness  itself,  his  friends  were 
all  complimentary  —  then  what  on  earth  was  the  mat- 
ter? The  fact  is,  if  our  friend  Randon  had  been 
honest  with  himself  —  but  what  man  or  woman  is 
ever  that?  —  he  would  have  confessed  to  a  certain 
suspicion  of  this  identical  phenomenally  smooth  run- 
ning.    The  young  man  knew  his  caste ;  all  this  pleas- 

174 


THE  NOON-MARK  175 

ant  and  placid  acceptance  meant  nothing  more  than 
an  impartial  and  good-natured  willingness  to 
watch  one  of  its  members  through  a  piquantlj 
unusual  performance.  He  was  his  own  master; 
what  he  did  with  himself  touched  none  of  them;  it 
only  entertained.  It  would  have  been  unreasonable 
and  unjust  of  him  to  have  expected  their  attitude  to 
be  the  same  as  if  he  had  got  engaged  to  some  girl  of 
their  own  circle  —  that  is  —  ahem !  —  their  acquaint- 
ance. The  fact  was  no  reflection  on  Nettie  —  Nettie 
who  was  worth  a  dozen  of  them  as  he  told  himself  with 
fire ;  but  it  was  a  fact  to  be  faced,  nevertheless. 

"  .  .  .  I  hear  Miss  Stieffel  is  very  pretty,"  the 
cousins  —  mostly  those  in  skirts  —  wrote  from  their 
stately  mansard-roof  houses,  modernized  with  new 
plumbing  and  electric  lights,  those  houses  which  were 
uniformly  in  the  old  part  of  town  where  some  of  the 
old  families  still  hung  on;  Randon  had  heard  them 
thus  described  a  hundred  times.  "  The  name  is  un- 
familiar to  me,  out  I  have  been  away  for  twenty-five 
years,  and  no  doubt  would  find  society  very  much 
changed  if  I  were  to  go  back  now.  A  great  many 
new  people  have  come  in  here,  too  —  very  charming 
ones,  some  of  them.  .  .  .  I  enclose  a  little  note  to  the 
young  lady,  and  will  ask  you  to  deliver  it,  as  I 
haven't  the  address,"  etc.  Randon  conveyed  the  mis- 
sives in  due  form;  and  assured  himself  that  Nettie's 
wonder  at  receiving  them,  and  her  frank  ignorance  as 
to  what  to  do  with  or  about  them  were  most  deli- 
ciously  naive,  ingenuous,  adorable. 

"  My,  what  a  lot  of  relatives  you  have !  Do  they 
always  make  this  much  fuss  over  everything  you  do? 
They  must  think  a  lot  of  you,"  she  commented. 

"  Well  —  You  see  these  are  almost  all  people  of 


176  THE  NOON-MAEK 

my  mother's  age.  They  were  all  girls  together,  so 
of  course  they  take  an  interest.  I  —  I  think  it's 
rather  sweet  of  them,  now;  though  I  remember  it 
used  to  bore  me  to  death  when  I  was  a  small  boy  —  " 

"  Uh-huh.  This  one  writes  a  good  hand,  don't  she? 
Just  as  clear!  Was  she  ever  in  an  office,  do  you 
know?     It  looks  like  she'd  done  office- work." 

"  Why  —  er  —  no,  oh  no !  That's  from  Aunt 
Marion,  isn't  it?  No,  she's  never  done  any  work,  ex- 
cept on  charity-boards  and  church,  and  all  that,  you 
know  —  " 

"  I  guess  they  made  her  secretary.  /  would  have," 
said  Nettie,  surveying  Aunt  Marion's  even  and  legible 
lines  in  warm  admiration.  "  Yes,  it's  signed  Marion 
McQuair  Hastings.  That  other  one  is  from  Phila- 
delphia, too.  Do  both  those  ladies  live  in  the  same 
house? " 

"  No.  Mrs.  Craig  has  her  own  home  and  lives 
by  herself.  She's  a  widow.  Some  day  I'd  love  to 
show  you  those  old  places  —  little,  plain  old  red  brick 
houses,  you  know,  with  white  doors  and  funny  little 
old  brass  knobs  and  railings.  They're  all  built  up 
solid  in  rows,  and  it's  not  a  fashionable  part  of  the 
city  any  more,  but  the  old  ladies  like  to  live  there  —  " 

Nettie  was  not  at  all  interested  in  the  picturesque- 
ness  of  old  Philadelphia,  white  doors,  brass  railings, 
and  so  forth.  "  Oh,  sugar!"  she  ejaculated,  twirling 
the  letter  between  her  fingers  in  open  disappointment. 
"  Then  I'll  have  to  write  to  each  of  'em.  I  thought  if 
they  lived  together,  one  would  do.  You  know  it's 
kind  of  hard  thinking  up  different  things  to  say,"  she 
explained  to  him  very  simply  and  earnestly.  "  And 
generally  it  sounds  somehow  sort  of  flat,  too.  When 
they  live  in  separate  towns,  I  just  write  one  letter 


THE  NOON-MARK  177 

and  copy  it  off.  They'll  never  know  the  difference.'' 
Randon  laughed ;  he  did  not  ask  her  if  she  wrote  on 
the  typewriter  and  transcribed  by  the  same  efficient, 
tireless  and  eminently  practical  agency.  He  was 
afraid  to  ask ! 

In  the  meanwhile  he  himself  was  not  cumbered  with 
similar  attentions  from  his  betrothed's  family  and 
friends  —  naturally,  since  they  were  all  of  them  resi- 
dent in  this  part  of  the  world,  and  by  far  the  larger 
number  in  Maplehurst  itself.     Rochester  Avenue  had 
witnessed,  more  or  less,  every  stage  of  the  courtship 
from  the  beginning;  it  knew  young  McQuair  by  sight, 
and  had  known  Nettie  Stieffel  familiarly  since  she  was 
in  the  Primary ;  but,  as  Mr.  Weaver  put  it,  there  was 
no  call  for  anybody  to  butt  in  with  congratulations 
on  that  account.     However,  he  himself  did  go  so  far 
as  to  say,  on  meeting  Randon  at  the  Stieffel  front 
walk  and  on  being  introduced  to  him  —  "  Meet  Mr. 
McQuair,  Mr.  Weaver,"  said  Nettie,  blushing  red  but 
game  as  always  —  Mr.  Weaver,  I  say,  grasped  the 
other's  hand  very  heartily  and  went  so  far  as  to 
say :     "  WTell  now,  Mr.  McQuair,  I'm  pleased  to  meet 
you,  and  I  want  to  tell  you  right  now,  young  man, 
you're  getting  a  mighty  nice  girl!     I  guess  I  got  a 
right  to  say  it,  I've  known  her  all  her  life."     Randon 
reddened  too,  and  laughed  awkwardly,  but  on  the 
whole  kept  a  manly  countenance,  returning  the  under- 
taking hand-shake  with  equal  cordiality.     Mr.  Weaver 
reported  him  afterwards  as  acting  not  at  all  stuck-up 
like  what  you  might  have  looked  for  from  his  folks, 
but  perfectly  plain  and  easy  —  easy  as  an  old  shoe. 
It  was  news  which  the  neighborhood  received  with  a 
lenie'nt  incredulity ;  pleasant  —  if  true,  was  the  gen- 
eral verdict. 


178  THE  NOON-MARK 

There  was  one  member  of  Maplehurst  society,  how- 
ever, who  made  no  secret  of  his  chagrin ;  and  that  was 
the  dark-browed  Mr.  James  Marvin,  who  had  con- 
sidered himself  to  have  entered  the  running  with  Ran- 
don,  and  was  most  disagreeably  taken  aback  at  sud- 
denly being  distanced.  He  had  a  pretty  high  opinion 
of  his  own  attractions,  and  had  set  down  her  uni- 
formly cool  and  off-hand  behavior  to  Nettie's  well- 
known  "  way."  Now  when  he  passed  her  on  the 
street,  he  would  give  her  a  glance  of  reproachful 
and  outraged  regard  —  of  which  Nettie,  alack,  was 
entirely  unconscious!  Millie's  report  that  Jim  felt 
awfully  sore  at  being  thrown  down  surprised  and  an- 
noyed, instead  of  gratifying  her. 

"  Me  throw  Jim  Marvin  down !  "  she  exclaimed. 
"  Why,  I  never !  He's  been  coming  round  to  see  you. 
He's  keeping  on  coming  just  the  same  —  except  on 
Elmer's  nights." 

"  Oh  now,  Net,  don't  make  out  as  if  you  didn't 
know.  You  always  act  that  way.  Why,  you  did 
with  Ranny  right  up  to  the  last  minute  —  " 

"  Well,  I  didn't  —  about  Jim,  I  mean.  Honestly. 
Of  course  he'd  start  sometimes  to  talk  around  that 
soft  way,  and  I  don't  like  that.  Why,  you  know  I 
don't.  I  always  stop  'em  when  they  begin  that.  You 
can't  let  'em  go  on.  First  thing  you  know  they'll  be 
trying  to  kiss  you." 

"Well?"  inquired  Millie. 

"  Well,  you  can  if  you  want  to,  Millie  Aymar. 
Suit  yourself !  But  /  won't !  "  said  Nettie  answering 
something  which  the  other  girl  had  left  unsaid.  "  If 
you're  engaged  to  the  man,  of  course  it's  different. 
I  don't  say  —  "  she  was  adding  hastily,  but  at  this 


THE  NOON-MARK  179 

second-thought  qualification,  Millie  fell  back,  lost  in 
laughter. 

"Oh,  Net,  you're  too  funny!"  She  laughed  till 
the  tears  came,  and  she  had  to  wipe  them  away,  still 
laughing.  "  Anyhow,"  she  said,  recovering,  "  Jim 
thinks  you  knew  all  along,  and  he's  pretty  sore." 

"  If  he  is,  he'll  get  over  it  all  right  —  and  it  won't 
take  him  very  long,  either,"  said  Nettie,  shrewdly. 
"  He's  not  the  kind  to  get  heart-broken  over  any  girl." 

So  Mr.  Marvin  continued  to  deliver  his  melodra- 
matic side-glances  without  effect.  Millie  wondered  a 
little,  privately,  at  her  cousin's  taste ;  she  herself  con- 
sidered that  there  was  no  comparison  between  the 
two  young  men  in  point  of  looks  and  "  style,"  the  only 
advantage  on  Randon's  side  was  that  secure  and  allur- 
ing height  on  the  social  ladder  to  which  Nettie  was  so 
preposterously  indifferent.  The  spectacle  put  the 
other  girl  out  of  temper ;  give  her  such  a  chance ! 

However,  the  camel  not  being  forthcoming,  a  mouse 
would  do.  Millie  had  definitely  made  up  her  mind 
to  Elmer  Hands.  Everybody  said  Elmer  was  a 
steady  young  fellow ;  he  had  no  bad  habits ;  he  was  a 
hard  worker;  he  put  money  in  the  bank  every  pay- 
day. No  item  of  this  good  rating  made  much  impres- 
sion on  Millie  except  the  last,  but  that  alone  was 
enough.  Besides,  Elmer  had  got  his  expected  raise, 
and  undoubtedly  the  firm  would  give  him  another 
on  his  getting  married.  According  to  Millie's  cal- 
culations, they  could  manage  very  well  without  her 
having  to  do  too  much  of  the  housework,  and  she  did 
not  anticipate  children;  it  would  be  a  long  while 
before  they  could  afford  to  burden  themselves  with 
that  expense  and  trouble  —  if  ever!     Nowadays  she 


180  THE  NOON-MARK 

passed  more  time  even  than  heretofore  in  front  of  the 
display-windows  filled  wTith  brocaded  corsets,  sum- 
mer and  winter  furs,  and  the  latest  fancies  in  fine 
footwear,  and  read  the  columns  of  bargains  in  chiffon 
blouses  with  redoubled  fervor.  She  was  a  thrifty 
little  body  with  her  money  contrary  to  what  might 
have  been  supposed,  making  it  go  farther  even  than 
the  practical  Nettie;  it  is  true  that,  aside  from  her 
board,  Millie  spent  only  on  herself,  where  the  other 
helped  out  with  the  family  finances.  But  then,  look 
how  much  more  Nettie  made,  her  cousin  would  have 
argued;  and  look  at  the  poor  little  fifteen  dollars  a 
week  she  herself  drew! 

It  began  to  be  evident  about  this  time,  though  — 
at  least  to  Nettie,  who  was  the  only  one  in  the  secret 
—  that  Miss  Ayniar's  wardrobe  was  being  expanded  in 
accordance  with  a  substantial  increase*  of  income. 
She  made  purchases  for  her  bridal  chest  which  were 
a  good  deal  beyond  Nettie's  budget.  There  must  be 
more  in  that  extra  work  than  she  had  lightly  sup- 
posed, the  latter  thought;  Millie  must  be  getting 
pretty  well  paid.  Nettie  was  generous  enough  to  be 
glad  on  her  cousin's  account;  her  surprise  was  good- 
natured,  her  curiosity  a  species  of  applause.  She 
was  really  fond  of  the  other  girl,  and  the  manifest 
worth  of  those  we  like  obscurely  compliments  our- 
selves. "  Tell  you,  Millie,  it's  worth  it  to  work  a 
little  harder  and  take  down  that  much  more  pay, 
now,  isn't  it?  "  she  remarked,  surveying  without  jeal- 
ousy the  other's  latest  excursions  in  trousseau-buy- 
ing, silk  stockings  and  various  be-frilled  and  be-laced 
intimacies  spread  out  on  the  bed  as  they  arrived  from 
the  shops. 

"  How  much  time  do  you  put  in,  anyhow?  " 


THE  NOON-MARK  181 

"  Well,  it's  according  to  what  I  have  to  copy,  you 
know.  Some  days  there's  a  lot,  and  then  for  a  while 
there  won't  be  anything  at  all,"  said  Millie  carelessly. 
She  was  too  absorbed  in  removing  price-tickets  and 
tying  and  re-tying  pink  ribbons  to  give  much  heed  to 
either  question  or  answer. 

"Oh,  it's  not  regular  then?  I  thought  it  was  a 
regular,  everyday  affair." 

"  No  —  just  as  the  bills  come  through  —  sometimes 
a  whole  bunch  and  sometimes  only  one  or  two." 

"  Bills?  What  kind  of  bills? "  said  Nettie,  her 
attention  caught,  a  little  puzzled. 

If  Millie's  sharp  little  wits  had  been  only  the  merest 
trifle  sharper,  she  would  have  discerned  that  the  way 
to  avert  inquiry  was  to  preserve  her  normal  non- 
chalance ;  Nettie  was  used  to  and  not  infrequently  irri- 
tated by  her  mechanical  discharge  of  duties  which  she 
made  no  effort  to  be  interested  in,  or  even  to  under- 
stand, and  Millie  should  have  kept  that  pose;  her 
cousin's  suspicions  were  not  yet  aroused.  But  the 
guilty  fleeth  when  no  man  pursueth ! 

"  Just  bills,  I  tell  you.  I  don't  know  what  kind 
they  are.  I  just  copy  'em.  Well,  I  wish  you'd  look! 
I  do  believe  there's  a  hole  in  that  lace  —  " 

But  she  had  said  too  much,  or  with  too  much  em- 
phasis; and  now  she  was  in  too  obvious  a  hurry  to 
divert  attention  elsewhere.  Nettie  looked  at  her  dis- 
turbed, somehow  apprehensive.  "  You've  got  to  know 
what  you're  copying.  Even  you  couldn't  copy  any- 
thing without  knowing  something  about  it.  And 
what  d'you  mean  'come  through'?  Come  through 
the  bank?  "  she  asked  in  a  troubled  voice;  "  what  you 
been  copying?  " 

"Nothing  —  nothing  of  any  consequence,  that  is," 


182  THE  NOON-MARK 

said  Millie  airily.  Then  she  added  with  an  appro- 
priate impatience :  "  My  goodness,  Net,  if  the  bank 
people,  if  Mr.  Franklin  and  all  of  'em  know  about  it, 
I  don't  see  what  you're  worrying  for!  " 

There  was  a  brief  pause.  Nettie  did  not  challenge 
this  last  speech,  although  she  recognized  it  for  one  of 
Millie's  own  brand  of  half-way  statements;  charged 
with  it  later,  she  had  left  herself  a  loophole  to  squeeze 
out  of  the  indictment;  she  had  been  misquoted,  she 
had  never  said  this,  she  had  never  said  that,  the 
other's  inference  was  all  wrong,  and  so  on  and  so  on. 
There  was  nothing  so  sure  as  that  neither  Mr.  Franklin 
nor  any  other  of  the  bank  authorities  knew  anything 
of  this  mysterious  copying;  but  Nettie  said  only: 
"  I'm  not  worrying  specially  —  I'm  just  asking.  Do 
you  give  the  copies  to  Jim?  And  then  does  he  pay 
you  for  them?  " 

This  time  there  was  no  way  out  but  a  direct  answer. 
"  Yes,"  said  Millie  sulkily.  "  Say,  look !  Isn't  that 
a  hole?  The  pattern  don't  match  it  on  this  other 
sleeve  —  " 

Nettie  got  up  off  the  bed.  She  was  genuinely 
shocked,  and  her  gesture  swept  aside  the  other  s  triv- 
ialities like  so  much  chaff.  "  Millie,"  she  said  witli 
both  alarm  and  indignation ;  "  don't  you  know  you 
can't  do  things  like  that?  You  can't  copy  off  the 
bank's  papers  and  give  'em  to  somebody  outside  — 
not  the  least  little  tiny  scrap  you  can't.  You  —  why, 
you  just  can't,  that's  all.  It's  not  what  you  ought 
to  do  —  it's  not  right.     Don't  you  know  that?" 

"  Oh,  stuff !  Jim  says  it's  all  right,  and  he's  a  man. 
Men  always  know.  Any  way  I  guess  he  knows  as 
much  about  this  as  you  do,  and  he  says  it's  all 
right  —  " 


THE  NOON-MARK  183 

"  Then  why's  he  so  careful  about  your  not  telling 
anybody?  "  said  Nettie,  keenly.  It  was  a  shot  in  the 
dark,  but  it  hit  the  target.  Millie  began  to  babble 
excitedly. 

"  Why,  Nettie  Stieffel,  how  you  talk !  Jim  never 
said  a  word  to  me  about  not  telling  anybody  —  not 
one  word.  It  was  me  —  on  account  of  Elmer  being 
jealous.  That's  the  only  reason  I  didn't  want  it  to  get 
around;  that's  the  only  reason  I  never  told  any- 
body —  " 

"  Why,  you  just  now  said  they  all  knew  at  the 
bank!" 

Millie,  cornered,  evaded  the  other  girl's  eyes  des- 
perately. "  Well  —  not  everybody  —  I  didn't  say 
that,  anyhow  —  I  just  said  supposing  they  knew  —  I 
—  I  —  oh,  do  quit,  Net !  "  she  burst  out  petulantly. 
"  I'm  never  going  to  tell  you  anything  again;  you're 
always  finding  fault  and  bossing !  It  don't  hurt  any- 
thing what  I've  been  copying.  Those  old  papers 
aren't  worth  shucks." 

"  They  must  be  worth  something  to  somebody,  or 
they  wouldn't  pay  you  to  make  copies  of  'em,"  said 
Nettie  with  ruthless  logic.  "  You  know  that.  Even 
if  you  didn't  know  out  of  your  own  head  that  it  wasn't 
right  to  do  things  like  that,  you  might  know  it  wasn't 
by  being  so  scared  you'd  be  found  out.  Something's 
sure  to  be  wrong  about  what  you  do,  if  you're  afraid 
to  have  people  know  it.  That's  one  sure  test."  And 
seeing  that  Millie  did  not  at  all  subscribe  to  this  argu- 
ment, scarcely  even  took  it  in,  she  brought  forward 
another  far  better  calculated  to  influence  her. 
"  They  might  put  Jim  in  jail  for  that." 

Millie's  beautiful  eyes  grew  wild  with  terror  — 
not  on  Jim's  account;  anything  but!     "Oh,  Net!" 


184  THE  NOON-MARK 

she  gasped  out :  "  They  —  they  wouldn't  come  after 
mc,  too,  would  they?  " 

"  How  do  I  know  what  they  might  do?  You  better 
be  on  the  safe  side,  anyhow,  and  stop  it,"  Nettie  coun- 
selled her;  and  the  other  promised  in  sheer  panic. 

Privately,  however,  Nettie  had  sage  doubts  both 
about  Jim's  liability  to  a  jail  sentence  and  the 
permanence  of  Millie's  good  resolutions.  The  worst 
that  could  happen  to  either  one  of  this  precious 
couple  would  be  the  loss  of  his  or  her  job,  she 
surmised  sharply.  If  Millie  got  any  inkling  of 
that,  she  would  go  on  with  her  unrighteous  copy- 
ing regardless  of  forty  promises.  But  wouldn't 
you  have  supposed  she  would  have  known  better  in 
the  first  place,  Nettie  asked  herself  in  disheartened 
bewilderment.  Her  own  stark  common-sense  indi- 
cated the  paths  of  right  and  wrong  unhesitatingly 
and  unhampered  by  any  such  tricky  faculty  as  imagi- 
nation; how  anybody  could  do  wrong  without  know- 
ing it,  or  knowing  it,  could  beguile  himself  into 
pretending  wrong  to  be  right,  at  once  dumbfounded 
and  angered  her.  She  was  not  really  hard  natured; 
but  the  same  streak  of  hardness  in  her  that  rendered 
her  immune  to  temptation  prevented  her  from  feel- 
ing the  most  remote  sympathy  for  those  who  suc- 
cumb. To  Nettie  they  were  not  so  much  pitiable 
weaklings  as  incomprehensible  fools ;  and  :  "  There, 
but  for  the  Grace  of  God,  goes  Nettie  Stieffel !  "  ex- 
presses a  humble  and  humane  understanding  of  which 
she  was  incapable. 

She  found  out  by  persistent  questioning  that  what 
Millie  had  been  copying  was  chiefly  concerned  with 
manufacturing  firms  and  business  houses  among  the 
bank's  customers  in  the  Mexican  and  South  American 


THE  NOON-MARK  185 

trade.  Millie  made  lists  of  the  notes  they  got  from 
the  Antipodes  and  discounted  which  she  passed  on 
to  Jim ;  once  when  he  had  been  going  away  some- 
where for  a  week  or  more  —  she  thought  to  a  prize- 
fight in  some  Western  town  —  he  had  given  her  an  ad- 
dress where  she  was  to  send  them  to  somebody  named 
Schwartz  or  Schmidt,  she  said  vaguely,  and  she  be- 
lieved he  had  something  to  do  with  the  German  con- 
sul. She  remembered  the  names  of  some  of  the  for- 
eign people  —  Perez  Hermannos,  Calle  de  la  Aduana 
14,  Buenos  Aires,  Argentine  —  Ceballos  y  Cia,  Mir- 
amar  78,  Valparaiso,  Chile,  etc.  And  that  was  about 
all  that  Nettie  could  get  out  of  her. 

"  If  Elmer  had  known,  he'd  have  told  you  just  the 
same  as  I  have.  But  as  long  as  you're  going  to  stop, 
1  don't  see  that  you  need  to  say  anything  to  him  about 
it."  Nettie  told  her,  meaning  only  kindness.  But  all 
unconsciously  she  must  have  assumed  the  attitude 
Millie  resented  as  "  boss-y,"  for  she  flared  out  with 
feminine  inconsistency : 

"I'll  tell  Elmer  anything  I  feel  like,  thank  you! 
You  don't  need  to  tell  me  how  to  act  with  Elmer. 
It  wouldn't  make  any  difference  to  him  what  I  did, 
anyhow.  He's  not  going  to  be  ashamed  of  me,  like 
some  fellows  are  of  their  girls !  " 

The  next  instant  she  repented  and  retracted ;  Millie 
was  seldom  actively  ill-tempered  —  altogether  the 
contrary.  She  had  an  amiable  disposition,  and  was 
moreover  cautious.  "  Oh,  I  didn't  mean  that,  Net ! 
That  was  real  hateful.  I  was  just  mad,  and  I'm  all 
kind  of  upset  anyhow.  I  take  it  back.  Say,  you 
don't  mind,  do  you?"  she  pleaded  with  caresses. 

"Goodness,  no!  It's  all  right!"  Nettie  assured 
her  briefly.     But  in  her  heart  of  hearts,  she  knew 


186  THE  NOON-MARK 

that  it  was  not  all  right ;  in  her  heart  of  hearts,  she 
was  shrinkingly  aware  that  a  form  had  been  given  to 
something  hitherto  formless,  yet  ugly  and  menacing. 


** 


XII 

DURING  these  days,  the  newly  engaged  couple 
—  the  two  couples,  for  they  all  joined  forces 
as  often  as  ever  —  used  to  meet  as  before, 
going  to  and  from  the  offices  and  lunching  together  at 
the  Kentucky  Kitchen ;  and  on  the  afternoons  of 
Saturdays  and  holidays  Randon  and  Nettie  still  took 
their  long  walks.  If  it  occurred  to  the  young  man 
with  distasteful  persistency  that  a  certain  degree 
of  intimacy  with  his  betrothed's  family  was  entailed 
upon  him,  and  that  in  conscience  and  common  de- 
cency he  ought  to  make  some  effort  or  show  some  dis- 
position towards  knowing  Nettie's  people  better,  he 
was  capable  of  putting  it  out  of  his  mind  with  the 
excuse  that  formalities  —  or  informalities,  for  that 
matter  —  were  not  necessary ;  they  knew  all  about 
him ;  some  day,  of  course  — .  But,  in  the  mean- 
while — . 

In  the  meanwhile,  Mr.  Randon,  apparently  with  the 
common  consent,  never  went  to  the  house,  and  was 
not  expected  there.  "  It's  too  kind  of  crowded,  and 
no  place  to  ourselves,  I  keep  telling  him.  There 
wouldn't  be  much  satisfaction  in  it.  You  see  how  it 
is,"  Nettie  explained  to  her  Aunt  Julia,  a  little  over- 
anxiously.  Heretofore  her  live-and-let-live  creed 
had  never  exacted  or  volunteered  explanations  of  any- 
body's conduct,  however  bizarre;  and  this  departure 
may  have  been  illuminating,  but  Julia  gave  no  sign 
of  surprise  or  undue  interest.     She  asquiesced  with 

187 


188  THE  NOON-MARK 

an  absent-minded  grunt  and  went  on  sewing ;  and  un- 
doubtedly this  indifferent  acceptance  was  a  relief  to 
Nettie.  But  left  to  herself,  the  older  woman  sighed. 
"  It's  beginning  already !  "  she  thought,  with  a  de- 
spondency which,  however,  did  not  affect  the  activity 
of  her  needle  and  tape-measure;  the  indulgence  of 
emotions  is  a  spendthrift  luxury  that  right-minded 
poverty  will  not  allow  itself.  Lucky  or  unlucky,  sad 
or  glad,  Julia  staved  ahead  at  her  work.  She  did  not 
feel  justified  in  making  any  inroads  on  her  narrow 
horde,  those  savings  and  scrapings  of  years  against 
the  bogies  of  old  age  and  sickness  that  camped  for- 
ever on  her  door-step,  to  contribute  to  the  girls'  out- 
fits. "  You'll  just  have  to  take  my  wedding-present 
out  in  sewing,"  she  told  them,  not  without  a  wistful 
regret,  much  more  profound  than  anything  they 
themselves  felt.  "  You  both  of  you  know  how  it  is. 
;T  aint  like  I  wouldn't  give  you  the  grandest  kind  of 
things  if  I  could.  But  seeing  as  I  can't  give,  next 
best  is  to  do,  I  guess.  Now  don't  you  go  buying  any 
more  of  them  expensive  camisoles  and  shimmies,  Mil- 
lie. I  can  cut  a  pattern  off  of  'em  and  make  a  full 
set  for  the  cost  of  one  of  'em  at  Sawyer's.  You  just 
get  me  the  goods,  and  I'll  show  you.  That'll  leave 
you  more  money  to  put  on  your  stockings  and  things 
I  can't  make."  It  was  good  advice,  and  Julia  lived 
up  to  her  word  by  toiling  over  these  daintinesses  every 
spare  hour  of  her  day  and  often  into  the  night,  with 
her  patient  shoulders  bent  over  the  machine,  her 
patient,  ageing  eyes  smarting  with  the  strain.  The 
spectacle,  no  matter  how  touching,  need  move  no  one's 
sympathies;  there  was  nothing  Julia  desired  less. 
Any  misguided  commiseration  she  was  likely  to  meet 
with  the  information  not  too  gently  delivered  that  no- 


THE  NOON-MARK  189 

body  was  making  her  sew  for  the  girls,  she  did  it  be- 
cause she  chose  to ;  she  liked  it ;  and  there  was  some- 
thing else  she  always  had  liked,  too,  namely:  for 
people  to  mind  their  own  affairs ! 

Mrs.  Frank  Stieffel  was  one  of  those  who  never  of- 
fended her  sister-in-law  either  with  too  much  sym- 
pathy or  with  offers  of  help.  As  busy  as  she  was  with 
the  house  and  family  on  her  hands,  how  could  she 
find  time  to  get  her  niece  and  daughter  ready  to  be 
married?  All  Rochester  Avenue  understood  her  posi- 
tion —  or,  if  not,  it  was  not  for  want  of  being  told. 
You  could  drop  into  the  Stieffel  kitchen  any  time  and 
hear  all  about  it,  while  all  of  to-day's  dishes  and  some 
left  over  from  yesterday  stood  stacked  on  the  sink 
and  stove  awaiting  washing,  while  the  milk-bottles 
soured  on  the  back  step  where  they  had  been  standing 
since  the  delivery-wagon's  visit  at  five  o'clock  that 
morning,  while  Frank  slept  stertorously  in  his  chair 
involved  in  a  kind  of  halo  of  odors,  stale  pipe  and 
Irish  stew  combined.  Mrs.  Frank  would  be  reading 
Hearths  and  Homes  and  powerfully  interested  in  an 
article  giving  directions  how  to  make  beads  out  of 
rose-petals  dried,  reduced  to  pulp  and  indurated; 
necklaces  and  ornaments  constructed  therewith  were 
attractively  unique  and  brought  fabulous  sums. 
"  My,  I  do  wish  I  had  the  time  to  try  it  once !  "  she 
would  sigh.  "  It  would  be  lovely  if  I  could  make 
some  money  on  the  side  —  well,  will  you  listen  at 
me  talking  that  slang!  I  pick  it  up  from  the  child- 
ren, you  know.  But  I  just  wish  I  had  the  time  and 
stren'th  to  make  a  little  something.  Nettie  getting 
married'll  make  a  difference  in  the  money  coming  in, 
of  course  —  not  that  I'm  complaining.  It's  all  right, 
and  I'm  glad  the  child's  going  to  be  happy.     Nettie's 


190  THE  NOON-MARK 

just  the  grandest  daughter  that  ever  was!"  Her 
faded  eyes  filled.  It  was  the  truth ;  poor  Maggie  never 
uttered  a  word  that  could  be  construed  as  complaint ; 
and  as  to  anxiety  about  the  future,  she  was  not  in  the 
habit  of  entertaining  any  sentiment  so  depressing. 

No  date  had  been  set  for  either  wedding,  as  yet; 
but  one  day  something  occurred  which  had  the  effect, 
ultimately,  of  hastening  Millie's.  That  is  to  say, 
Mr.  James  Peabody  frowningly  and  forcibly  imparted 
some  news  at  directors'  meeting  Tuesday  morning  be- 
fore the  regular  business  of  the  institution  was  opened, 
which  brought  forth  equally  frowning  and  forcible 
comment  from  the  other  gentlemen;  and  there  was 
some  asking  of  questions  which  however,  Mr.  Peabody 
could  not  or  at  any  rate  did  not  answer.  He  had  dis- 
charged the  young  man,  he  said;  he  merely  wished  to 
put  the  bank  people  on  their  guard,  as  since  this  thing 
had  come  up  he  had  inquired  around  and  discovered 
to  his  astonishment  that  banks  in  other  cities  had  had 
a  similar  experience.  Personally,  he  would  admit  to 
having  formed  a  strong  prejudice  against  the  German 
code  of  business  morals,  ever  since  their  insurance 
firms  laid  down  on  paying  their  San  Francisco  fire 
losses;  to  his  knowledge  they  were  the  only  people 
that  did  so.  This  other  thing  seemed  to  be  exactly 
in  line  with  their  practices  on  that  occasion. 

And  that  was  all.  Nobody  ever  knew  exactly  how 
or  from  whom  Mr.  Peabody's  information  came;  it 
might  well  have  been  from  young  Marvin  himself 
for  he  was  as  loose-tongued  as  most  braggarts  and 
sometimes  took  a  drink  too  much,  besides.  The  av- 
erage cheap  rogue  is  also  a  cheap  fool.  Anyhow, 
there  was  Jim  out  of  a  job,  though  with  half  a  dozen 
loud,  easy  tales  to  account  for  it;  and  here,  alas,  was 


THE  NOON-MARK  191 

poor  little  Millie  Aymar  haled  up  before  the  judg- 
ment-seat in  Mr.  Marklein's  private  office  and  argued 
at  with  grave  words  about  duty  and  loyalty  and  busi- 
ness-honor appalling  to  hear  even  if  very  imperfectly 
understood.  No  one  knew  anything  about  this  epi- 
sode at  the  time.  Corporations  may  not  be  so  soul- 
less, after  all,  as  we  have  been  drilled  to  believe  them ; 
at  all  events  the  authorities  at  the  head  of  the  Trav- 
elers' And  Traders',  in  the  person  of  their  vice-presi- 
dent, conducted  themselves  towards  this  culprit  with 
clemency  and  an  obvious  disposition  to  make  allow- 
ances for  her  sex  and  youth. 

"  A  bank,"  said  Mr.  Marklein,  in  the  course  of  his 
instructive  little  oration,  "  is,  in  many  respects, 
the  confidential  clerk  of  its  customers.  It  has  no  busi- 
ness to  pass  around  information  of  this  sort ;  that  is 
not  what  a  bank  exists  for.  Such  a  policy  would  be 
suicidal,  even  if  it  were  not  distinctly  unscrupulous. 
It  seems  that  these  —  er  —  these  data  that  you  —  er 
—  collected,  were  communicated  through  the  German 
government  channels  to  firms  in  Hamburg  and  Bre- 
men, all  over  Germany,  in  fact,  and  greatly  facilitated 
their  getting  into  touch  with  these  South  American 
people  and  the  rest  with  propositions  underselling  the 
people  here  who  had  previously  been  doing  business 
down  there.  Now  of  course,  you're  just  an  inexperi- 
enced young  girl,  but  you  can  see  that  there's  some- 
thing not  quite  straight  about  the  whole  transaction, 
can't  you?  " 

"  Well,  I  didn't  know  what  they  were  going  to  do 
with  the  copies.  Anyhow,  they've  got  a  right  to  sell 
things  cheaper  than  other  people,  if  they  want  to, 
haven't  they?  Their  own  things?  "  said  Millie  plain- 
tively and  artlessly. 


192  THE  NOON-MARK 

"  Why,  certainly.  But  the  point  I'm  making  is 
that  this  bank  can't  have  anything  to  do  with  it. 
Of  course,  we  could  and  keep  out  of  the  penitentiary, 
but  now,  don't  you  see  that — ?"  Mr.  Marklein 
patiently  went  over  the  exposition  again  while  Millie 
drooped  before  him,  exquisite  as  a  flower  but  — 
whether  knowingly  or  not,  who  can  say?  —  convey- 
ing somehow  a  suggestion  anything  but  flower-like 
what  with  her  delicately  rounded  figure,  her  soft,  ap- 
pealing eyes,  the  troubled  movement  of  her  young 
breast.  Mr.  Marklein  was  a  man  grown  and  in  busi- 
ness before  she  was  born,  respectability  encased  him 
like  an  armor  —  strong  oak  and  thrice-laid  brass ! 
But  would  he  have  given  so  much  time  and  trouble 
to  a  young  man?  I  doubt  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
he  finally  interrupted  himself  in  a  most  unwonted  per- 
turbation, adjuring  her  not  to  do  that! 

"  Of  course  you  feel  badly  and  —  and  I  suppose  you 
ought  to  feel  badly  —  er  —  I  —  I  mean  you'll  take  the 
lesson  to  heart  —  you'll  never  be  led  into  doing  any- 
thing of  the  kind  again.  But  I  know  you  didn't  mean 
any  wrong  —  it  was  just  ignorance.  Now  don't  —  er 
—  don't  do  that!  It's  all  over,  and  nothing  to  cry 
about." 

"  I'll  go  a-w-way,"  sobbed  Millie ;  "  I'll  go  right 
a-w-way.  You  won't  want  me  round  any  more  after 
this  —  you  w-won't  t-trust  me  —  " 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right.  You  can  keep  your  position 
just  the  same.  After  this  you're  going  to  be  more  care- 
ful—  "  Mr.  Marklein  found  himself  much  inconve- 
nienced by  the  persistently  recurrent  thought  that  he 
had  never  before  seen  any  woman  look  pretty  when 
she  cried ;  generally  they  made  unbecoming  faces  and 
their  noses  swelled  up  and  got  red.     This  little  thing, 


THE  NOON-MARK  193 

on  the  contrary,  was  more  than  ever  cute  and  forlorn, 
like  a  little  drenched  bird  out  in  the  rain.  Women 
ought  not  to  enter  business;  they  weren't  made  for  it; 
they  weren't  —  er — hard  enough,  he  said  to  himself 
with  vehemence. 

u  I  just  thought  it  would  be  so  nice  to  have  a  little 
more  money.     I  —  I  like  nice  things,"  sighed  Millie. 

Impossible  to  deny  it;  she  had  genius.  Old  Emil 
actually  caught  himself  on  the  verge  of  asking  her 
how  much  she  was  getting,  and  raising  her  a  few 
dollars!  lie  had  no  idea  of  raising  Nettie  Stieffel, 
though  she  was  a  pearl  of  office-girls,  and  moreover  as 
clear-headed  and  clean-handed  about  commercial  eth- 
ics as  himself.  Nor  had  that  scrawny,  anaemic,  irre- 
proachable, middle-aged  lady  Mrs.  Emil  Marklein, 
received  an  increase  of  allowance  for  this  long  while ; 
the  master  of  the  house  considered  himself  to  have 
always  shown  ample  generosity  in  her  direction. 

"  Well  now,  maybe  you'd  better  go  home  for  to-day 
and  —  er  —  rest  up  —  and  —  um  think  this  all  over. 
It's  after  hours,  anyway,"  he  recommended  rather  has- 
tily, looking  at  his  watch;  and  got  up  straightening 
his  coat  involuntarily.  "Yes,  that's  it!  You  can 
go  home.  No  need  to  tell  anybody  about  this,  you 
know.  As  I  was  saying,  it's  all  over  now,  and  —  er 
—  in  short,  least  said,  soonest  mended,  hey? ': 

"I'll  be  good,"  said  Millie  childishly.  "And  I 
think  you've  been  just  ever  so  kind,  Mr.  Marklein.  I 
don't  believe  any  of  the  other  gentlemen  would  have 
been  so  kind;  and  they  wouldn't  have  explained  it  so 
I  could  understand.  They'd  have  just  scolded.  I'm 
glad  it  was  you."  She  raised  a  pair  of  shy,  devoutly 
grateful  eyes  under  the  most  beautiful  long,  thick 
curving  lashes  in  the  world.     The  vice-presidential 


194  THE  NOON-MAKK 

heart  performed  an  acrobatic  gambol  which  the  vice- 
presidential  head  witnessed  with  a  kind  of  alarmed 
and  sneaking  pleasure. 

"Yes,  that's  just  it  —  you'd  better  go  right 
home — »  He  touched  one  of  the  buttons  on  his 
desk  to  summon  somebody  —  anybody  —  it  did  not 
matter  whom  or  for  what.  To  your  tents,  oh  Israel ! 
And  he  breathed  freer  when  Charles  the  bank  porter, 
a  colored  man  of  unexampled  decorum,  appeared.  At 
the  Civic  Club  dinner  that  evening,  Mr.  Marklein  in 
conversation  with  the  man  on  his  right,  reiterated 
his  conviction  that  women  should  not  go  into  busi- 
ness; that  sort  of  association  with  men  was  in  a 
sense  abnormal,  and  sure  to  be  productive  of  —  er 
—  complications.  "  Miss  Nettie,"  as  he  called  her, 
had  been  intimately  active  in  his  own  office  for  up- 
wards of  a  year,  a  young  and  unusually  good-looking 
girl — >but  Mr.  Marklein  did  not  have  her  in  mind 
when  he  spoke  of  women  in  business.  He  never  had 
her  sex  in  mind  at  all  on  any  occasion,  not  even  when 
he  was  dictating  a  letter  to  her  or  giving  her  an  order ; 
and  so,  naturally,  was  not  aware  of  an  inconsistency 
between  his  practice  and  his  rather  recently  formed 
theories. 

Millie  almost  told  him  about  her  approaching  mar- 
riage —  almost.  The  fact  might  be  a  trump  card  in 
the  way  of  excuse  and  appeal,  or  it  might  not;  in 
either  case,  there  was  no  profit  in  playing  it  when  — 
to  keep  up  the  metaphor  —  the  trick  could  be  taken 
otherwise.  And  it  swiftly  became  apparent  that  the 
trick  could  be  taken,  sure  enough,  much  more  eco- 
nomically, in  a  familiar  way,  her  standard  way  —  so 
to  call  it.     She  went  in  to  the  interview  really  very 


THE  NOON-MARK  195 

much  frightened ;  she  came  out  with  an  augmented 
sense  of  power.  That  this  power  was  based  upon 
something  distinctly  carnal,  shared  with  the  brutes, 
something  for  the  human  mind  to  survey  with  philos- 
ophy perhaps,  but  without  self-esteem,  troubled  Mil- 
lie not  the  least ;  indeed  her  perceptions  could  not 
carry  her  that  far  in  analysis.  She  herself  could 
not  have  been  called  coarse;  but  she  employed  the 
coarsest  feminine  weapon  instinctively,  without  actu- 
ally recognizing  it,  taking  a  pride  in  her  skill  that 
was  at  once  naive  and  pathetic,  and  —  to  the  rest  of 
us  who  are  all  of  such  fine,  high  natures  of  course  —  no 
doubt  a  little  horrible.  Men  were  certainly  awfully 
easy,  Millie  thought,  going  home  on  the  cars;  she 
laughed  to  remember  how  afraid  she  had  been  of 
that  old  grouch  Mr.  Marklein.  He  turned  out  as  easy 
as  all  of  them  —  easier!  She  always  had  had  an 
idea  that  the  old  ones  were  easier  than  the  young 
ones;  now  she  knew  it!  The  trouble  was  a  girl 
couldn't  get  at  the  old  ones;  she  wasn't  ever  thrown 
with  them ;  being  in  an  office  with  a  lot  of  other  girls 
didn't  count.  You  had  to  get  at  them  by  themselves, 
of  course;  like  to-day.  And  then,  nine  times  out  of 
ten,  they  were  married  already.  Mr.  Marklein,  for 
instance  —  Millie  gave  a  short  sigh.  Simultaneously 
with  her  complacent  self-approbation  at  having  for- 
borne to  mention  her  own  prospective  marriage  —  it 
woundn't  have  done  any  good ;  would  have  been  much 
more  likely  to  spoil  everything,  for  that  matter  — 
there  crept  into  her  mind  a  poisonous  discontent  with 
that  very  prospect,  with  Elmer,  with  her  life  as  it 
seemed  to  be  planned.  And  yet  she  had  no  faintest 
glimmer  of  a  desire  to  change  it.     No,  it  was  settled ; 


196  THE  NOON-MARK 

she  would  marry  Elmer.  Afterwards  —  who  knew 
what  might  happen  afterwards,  thought  little  Millie 
hopefully. 

All's  well  that  ends  well;  and  Millie  might  have 
stayed  on  with  the  Travelers'  And  Traders'  until  this 
present  moment,  had  she  chosen;  but  she  did  not 
choose.  Perhaps  she  was  tired  of  work,  perhaps  only 
out  of  temper  with  it,  and  desirous  of  a  change.  At 
any  rate  Elmer  presently  found  himself  urging  her  to 
hurry  up  with  her  preparations  and  set  a  date  with  a 
fervor  and  impatience  which,  to  tell  the  truth,  sur- 
prised him  —  at  odd  times  when  he  stopped  to  think 
about  it.  In  point  of  fact  he  was  not  quite  ready  him- 
self ;  he  would  have  liked  to  have  had  another  year's 
savings  in  bank.  But  now  he  all  at  once  began  to  feel 
jealously  insecure  about  Millie;  the  indulgence  with 
which  she  regarded  other  men's  attentions  and  their 
admiration  thrust  itself  upon  his  notice  more  and 
more.  If  Millie  took  care  that  it  should,  nobody 
could  have  proved  it  from  her  attitude;  she  com- 
plained amiably  that  Elmer  just  kept  at  her  and  kept 
at  her  until  she  simply  had  to  give  up  and  agree  to 
being  married  right  off,  if  only  to  keep  him  quiet ! 

It  was  a  cool,  bright  day  in  early  fall  when  the  wed- 
ding took  place.  The  house  was  in  gala  array; 
Julia  paid  a  colored  lady  to  wash  and  hang  the  lace 
curtains;  Nettie  paid  the  caterer  who  furnished  the 
ice-cream  and  lady -fingers;  and  Julia  and  Nettie  to- 
gether in  their  scant  leisure  somehow  accomplished 
all  the  other  cleaning  and  cooking  necessary  with  help 
from  Mrs.  Weaver  and  sundry  neighbors  whose  anx- 
iety to  be  useful  was  hampered  by  their  equal  anxiety 
not  to  seem  officious  or  inquisitive  or  interfering. 
"  Not  that  Mis'  Stieffel  would  mind !     A  person  could 


THE  NOON-MARK  197 

go  into  her  house  and  turn  it  upside  down  right  under 
her  nose  for  all  she'd  care,  she's  that  easy-going," 
thev  said  to  one  another  with  some  good-natured 
contempt.  "  But  Julia's  an  old  maid,  and  you  know 
how  they  are,  and  Nettie's  kinda  independent  —  I 
wouldn't  want  to  do  anything  that  would  look  like  I 
was  trying  to  run  'em."  Millie,  of  course,  did  not 
share  these  labors;  brides-elect  are  supposed  to  have 
enough  on  their  minds  and  hands  already  without 
washing  and  polishing  the  furniture,  deciding  where 
the  hat-rack  had  better  be  put,  and  helping  to  take 
down  the  bed  so  that  the  front  room  can  be  used  cere- 
monially. One  of  the  girls  gave  her  a  linen-shower, 
resulting  in  a  profuse  supply  of  handkerchiefs  and 
small  doilies;  Elmer's  present  was  a  wrist-watch,  a 
variety  of  toy  new  at  that  date ;  and  Mrs.  Hector  Mc- 
Quair  sent  a  dozen  of  fine  towels,  hand-woven,  fit  for 
Queen  Mab's  bridal-chest,  with  intricate  monograms 
wrought  in  French  embroidery,  each  a  bas-relief  of 
minute  and  delicate  stitches,  a  work  of  art  in  its 
kind.  That  young  girl  had  all  the  tastes  of  a  gentle- 
woman, and  it  was  exactly  the  sort  of  gift  she  would 
appreciate,  the  old  lady  thought.  In  a  long  career 
of  tactful  guessing,  it  was  her  worst,  perhaps  her 
only  mistake.  Millie  was  wretchedly  disappointed. 
More  linen!  And  nothing  but  old  towels  at  that! 
People  would  only  see  them  in  the  bathroom;  and 
think  what  a  job  it  would  be  to  keep  them  done  up 
and  looking  like  anything !  Well,  she  was  not  going 
to  undertake  that;  she  would  simply  have  to  put  them 
away,  and  much  good  they  would  do  her ! 

Ranny  McQuair  officiated  as  best  man,  balancing 
Nettie  as  bridesmaid ;  in  Rochester  Avenue  parlance, 
he  and  Nettie  stood  up  with  them.     It  is  a  mere  mat- 


198  THE  NOON-MARK 

ter  of  phrases,  and  one  is  surely  as  good  as  the  other. 
"  Say,  don't  wear  one  of  these  frock-coats,  for  the 
Lord's  sake!"  Elmer  adjured  him  energetically. 
"  They  make  me  think  of  a  funeral  every  time  I  see 
one ;  a  man  hardly  ever  puts  one  on  except  to  be  pall- 
bearer, you  know.  I  expect  old  Pop  Weaver  will  be 
all  diked  out  in  his,  and  if  he  just  don't  forget  and  tell 
the  folks  they  can  all  step  up  and  take  a  look  at  the 
remains  as  soon  as  the  services  are  done,  I'll  be  thank- 
ful," the  young  man  interjected  with  a  nervous  grin; 
he  was  as  excited  and  unsteady  as  the  average  ex- 
pectant groom.  "  I  haven't  got  one  myself,"  he  added, 
returning  to  the  frock-coat  theme.  "  I'm  just  going  to 
wear  a  business-suit  —  it's  new,  of  course." 

Eandon  promised  him  with  laughter;  and  when 
the  great  morning  came,  went  around  to  Rochester 
Avenue,  costumed  as  directed.  Nettie  peeped  over 
the  top  of  the  freshly  laundered  sash-curtain  in  the 
bedroom  where  the  bride  —  flurried  for  once  with  all 
the  color  gone  out  of  her  face  —  was  mechanically 
dusting  on  superfluous  powder  and  dusting  it  off 
again;  Nettie  peeped  out  and  caught  sight  of  the 
groom  and  his  best  man  on  the  front  walk,  the  latter 
being  introduced  by  somebody  to  somebody  —  she 
had  no  eyes  for  their  uninteresting  figures.  Randon 
was  taking  off  his  hat  —  smiling  —  shaking  hands  — 
saying  something;  the  girl's  heart  gave  a  sudden 
bound  of  pride.  He  looked  so  tall  and  straight  and 
—  and  nice,  she  thought  incoherently ;  his  coat  set  so 
well  to  his  shoulders  —  a  first-class  tailor,  of  course, 
but  other  men's  coats  did  not  fit  that  way,  first-class 
tailors  and  all.  Other  men  looked  dressed  up  when 
they  had  on  their  good  clothes;  Randon  never  looked 
dressed  up  in  anything,  his  clothes  seemed  to  grow  on 


THE  NOON-MARK  199 

him,  he  never  seemed  to  know  anything  about  them, 
and  yet  they  were  always  the  right  kind  of  clothes. 
And  see  him  take  off  his  hat!  Nobody  else  could  do 
it  jnst  that  way.  They  disappeared  under  the  porch 
roof  and  she  could  hear  her  mother's  voice,  high- 
pitched,  and  hysterically  girling  in  welcome.  Julia 
heard  it  too,  as  she  knelt  on  the  floor,  twitching  and 
pulling  unnecessarily  at  Millie's  skirts. 

"  That's  them,  ain't  it?  The  boys,  I  mean?  Your 
Maw  said  '  Hello,  Elmer! '  didn't  she?  I  do  hope  to 
gracious  her  back  hair  ain't  coming  down,  or  the  snap- 
pers on  her  placket  opened,  or  nothing  like  that  hap- 
pened to  her,"  she  grumbled  through  a  mouthful  of 
pins ;  "  she's  so  worked  up  she  don't  know  whether 
she's  standing  on  her  head  or  her  heels." 

"  Her  hair's  all  right.  I  fixed  one  of  my  nets  on 
her  good  and  firm.  You  just  look  out  for  your  own 
hair,"  Nettie  commanded  with  brusque  playfulness. 
"  Millie's  all  right,  too.  Aunt  Ju,  do  leave  her  be. 
Stand  up  here  and  let  me  look  you  over  yourself." 

"  You'll  be  the  only  person  that  does.  It  ain't 
worth  while,"  said  Julia  shortly ;  but  she  scrambled  to 
her  feet,  secretly  pleased  to  have  Nettie  turn  her  about 
and  twitch  and  pat  and  pull  in  the  approved  fashion. 

One  of  the  younger  children  came  to  the  door  and 
announced  through  it  in  a  piercing  stage  whisper: 
"  Say,  Reverend  Stegemiller's  here,  and  he  says  when- 
ever you're  ready.  And  say,  Pop  says  ask  Nettie 
where  she  put  his  mustache-cup,  because  he  says 
he  —  " 

Millie  opened  the  door  and  jerked  the  youngster 
inside  fiercely.  "  Well,  you  don't  need  to  blatt  that 
all  out  so  everybody  can  hear  you  all  over  the 
house !  "  she  admonished  him  in  an  undertone  also 


200  THE  NOON-MARK 

but  of  a  quality  which  made  no  more  uoise  than  a 
slashing  razor  and  was  as  mercilessly  sharp.  "  Now 
say  it,  whatever  it  is ! " 

The  boy  said  it,  disarming  her  by  adding  a  compli- 
ment that  had  all  the  force  of  thirteen's  inimitable 
candor.  "Gee,  you  look  swell,  Millie !':  said  he; 
"some  bride,  hey?  Elmer's  got  on  a  silk  four-in- 
hand,  real  light  gray.  And  oh  say,  Net,  you  just 
wait  till  you  see  your  fellow!  You  won't  hardly 
know  him.  He  —  why,  he  makes  all  the  rest  of  the 
bunch  look  like  thirty  cents  —  " 

Julia  cut  him  off  harshly.  "Don't  you  say  that, 
Roy!  There  ain't  anybody  better  than  your  own 
folks,  nor  looks  nicer.  Don't  lemme  hear  you  talk 
like  that  —  " 

"  I  wasn't  saying  anything,"  protested  Roy,  justi- 
fiably amazed  and  outraged.  "  What's  eating 
you—?" 

"  Shh !  Now  you  keep  quiet,  and  mind  what  I'm 
telling  you !  " 

Nettie  listened  to  the  duet,  wondering.  Aunt  Julia 
must  be  pretty  tired  and  nervous,  she  thought,  to  take 
the  poor  kid  up  so  unreasonably.  But  — .  She  read 
something,  pained,  wistful,  almost  frightened  in  the 
old  spinsters  eyes  as  they  rested  on  her  for  a  second; 
and  a  phantom  that  she  had  tried  to  believe  laid  for 
good,  rose  up  and  stalked  through  the  far  recesses 
of  her  mind  in  renewed  and  hateful  vitality. 


XIII 

THE  Hands-Aymar  wedding  attained  the  emi- 
nence of  mention  in  the  "  Society  Jottings  " 
column  of  the  Sunday  Observer;  Millie  cut 
out  the  paragraph  and  pasted  it  on  the  back  of  the 
marriage-certificate  which  (embellished  with  sprays 
of  roses,  lilies-of-the-valley  and  orange-blossoms 
wreathed  in  and  out  amongst  the  lettering,  that  an 
artistic  friend  obligingly  painted  for  them)  they  had 
framed  and  hanging  up  in  the  bedroom  of  their  flat. 
Of  the  actual  ceremony,  Millie  remembered  little  or 
nothing  in  her  preoccupation  with  her  own  appear- 
ance. The  unanimous  verdict  of  the  company  about 
it  was  most  gratifying;  seldom,  they  said,  did  a  bride 
look  so  fresh  and  blooming;  the  girls  were  almost  al- 
ways completely  fagged  out  with  the  arduous  business 
of  getting  ready,  and  at  the  final  moment  did  not  do 
themselves  justice,  so  to  speak  —  besides  all  but  flying 
to  pieces  with  nerves.  Millie  was  an  exception;  by 
the  time,  accompanied  by  Nettie,  and  with  eyes  suit- 
ably and  becomingly  cast  down,  she  reached  the  foot 
of  the  stairs,  she  had  recovered  her  natural  poise.  As 
a  rule  she  was  at  her  best  in  public ;  and  in  earlier 
days  of  church  and  school  entertainments  had  earned 
the  name  of  being  the  most  reliable  performer.  Now, 
as  then,  the  audience  stimulated  instead  of  unnerving 
her.  It  was  Nettie  who  was  awkward  and  embar- 
rassed in  the  crowded  little  parlor,  with  everybody 
within  arms'  length,  her  mother  sniffing  and  the  child- 

201 


202  THE  NOON-MARK 

ren  shoving  in  the  background,  her  father  with  his 
mild  patient  face  looking  unnaturally  clean,  shaved 
and  surmounting  an  unaccustomed  collar,  Elmer  pal- 
lidly self-conscious,  Randon  standing  close  beside  her, 
seriously  attentive  to  the  service,  the  only  person  in 
the  room  about  whose  bearing  there  was  nothing  arti- 
ficial. It  was  an  exhibition  at  once  of  sincere  rev- 
erence and  spontaneous  good  taste;  Nettie,  with  a 
kind  of  boding  reluctance,  found  herself  confirming 
Roy's  report.  The  young  man  stood  out  and  apart 
from  the  rest  of  them ;  it  was  through  no  effort  or  de- 
sire of  his  own,  for  he  was  the  least  self-assertive  of 
men,  as  Nettie  knew,  but  the  contrast  was  as  striking 
and  inescapable  as  if  he  had  been  a  spectator  from 
another  planet.  She  was  not  proud  now;  instead  a 
sick  dismay  flooded  her.  All  at  once  she  hated  the 
scene ;  she  hated  the  Reverend  Stegemiller  for  stumb- 
ling amongst  the  phrases  of  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  with  which  the  poor  divine,  who  professed  an- 
other creed,  was  calamitously  unfamiliar;  she  hated 
Millie  for  her  theatrical  pose;  she  hated  the  crayon 
enlargement  of  Grandma  Lindtner's  photograph,  and 
the  golden  oak  bookcase  with  the  little  mirror  at  the 
top  of  it ;  she  hated  the  smell  of  coffee  gushing  in  from 
the  kitchen  —  where  the  colored  lady  was  on  duty  — 
and  mingling  with  the  smell  of  cologne  and  violet- 
water  and  sachet-powder  and  moth-balls  with  which 
every  woman  present  except  herself  seemed  to  be,  as 
it  were,  seasoned,  she  hated  Nettie  Stieffel  and  wished 
that  she  was  down  at  the  bank  where  she  belonged, 
where  she  was  happy,  useful,  in  the  right  place  — 

"...  Into  this  holy  estate  these  persons  —  er  — 
these  two  persons  now  present  come  to  be  joined.  If 
any  man  now  present  —  er  —  if  any  man  can  show 


THE  NOON-MARK  203 

just  cause  why  they  may  not  be  joined  let  him  —  er 
—  why  they  may  not  be  joined  together  let  him  now 
speak,  or  else  forever  after  forever  —  or  else  forever 
and  ever  aft  —  or  else  hereever  after  — hereafter 
forever  hold  his  peace !  "  read  the  Reverend  Stege- 
miller,  making  pretty  heavy  weather  of  it,  but  flound- 
ering through  somehow. 

"  Well,  they'll  be  good  and  married  when  he  gets 
done!  Saying  everything  over  three  or  four 
times  — !"  Nettie  remarked  inwardly  with  her  hab- 
itual intolerance  of  the  incompetent.  She  had  gone 
to  All  Souls'  one  Sunday  evening  to  hear  the  music 
and  in  some  curiosity  about  the  church  of  which 
Randon  was  a  member  —  a  member,  that  is,  after  the 
easy  fashion  of  American  men ;  and  even  she  had  been 
measurably  impressed  by  the  lofty  and  beautiful 
wording  of  the  service  and  could  now  recognize  a  kin- 
ship between  that  and  this.  It  was  "  real  church-y, 
the  churchiest  thing  "  she  ever  heard,  she  confided  to 
Randon  afterwards;  and  for  that  very  reason,  she 
now  decided,  eminently  unfit  as  language  for  every- 
day purposes.  Look  at  all  the  trouble  Mr.  Stege- 
miller  was  having !  He  always  got  along  well  enough 
in  his  own  church,  at  weddings  and  funerals  and  so 
on,  though  you'd  think  it  would  be  harder  to  make 
up  a  prayer  out  of  your  own  head  than  to  read  it  off 
from  a  book.  Millie  had  insisted  on  the  Episcopal 
ritual ;  everybody  was  married  by  it,  she  said.  Nettie 
made  up  her  mind  that  she  would  have  the  squire,  and 
get  out  of  all  this  fuss ;  she  wasn't  going  to  spend  this 
much  of  her  own  money  on  a  wedding  again,  and  she 
certainly  wouldn't  let  any  one  spend  theirs;  Millie 
didn't  mind,  but  she  wasn't  Millie  — 

.  And  forsaking  all  others  keep  thee  only  unto 


a 


204  THE  NOON-MAKK 

her  so  long  as  ye  both  live  —  er  —  shall  live — " 
recited  Mr.  Stegemiller;  and  he  read  on:  "The  Man 
shall  answer:  I  will." 

The  Man  accordingly  answered  —  in  a  husky  whis- 
per that  could  scarcely  be  heard  three  feet  away ;  when 
it  came  to  her  turn  —  his  reverence  carefully  reading 
the  italicized  direction  as  before  —  the  Woman  made 
her  response  clearly  and  unfalteringly,  though  with 
a  suggestion  of  shrinking  shyness  that  was  very  pretty. 

It  was  over  at  last,  the  conclusion  of  the  ceremony 
being  accompanied  by  a  prodigious  hissing  and  sput- 
tering from  the  direction  of  the  kitchen ;  the  colored 
lady,  taking  the  universal  human  interest  in  a  wed- 
ding, had  deserted  her  post  and  left  the  intervening 
doors  ajar  while  she  looked  on,  and  in  that  moment  the 
coffee  boiled  over.     Mr.  Stegemiller  followed  up  the 
benediction  by  a  jovial  recommendation  to  Elmer  to 
kiss  the  bride,  and  upon  the  young  man's  complying 
with  a  diffident  peck  at  her  cheek,  followed  that  up  by 
kissing  her  himself  with  resounding  gusto.     Nettie 
could  tell  that  Millie  was  furious,  but  she  put  a  good 
face  on  it;  and  directly  there  was  so  much  kissing 
going  on  that  the  ministerial  salute  was,  so  to  speak, 
a  mere  drop  in  the  bucket.     Everybody  talked  and 
laughed  without  in  the  least  knowing  what  was  said 
or  what  the  laughter  was  about;  the  older  women  — 
pardon !  —  the  older  ladies  wiped  their  eyes  and  re- 
turned to  their  normal  practices  of  gossip  and  it  is  to 
be  feared  occasional  backbiting;   the  men  pumped 
Elmer's  hand  up  and  down  with  a  merciless  fervor  of 
congratulation;    the    children    clamored    underfoot. 
Julia  dashed  out  to  the  ice-cream  freezers;  spoons 
tinkled,  there  began  to  be  a  great  clapping  and  slam- 
ming of  Mr.  Weaver's  folding-chairs.     He  had  sup- 


THE  NOON-MARK  205 

plied  two  or  three  dozen  of  them  free  of  charge  in  the 
goodness  of  his  heart.  The  legend :  "  T.  W. 
WEAVER,  MORTUARY  PARLORS  "  stencilled  on 
the  under  side  of  the  seats  was  insistently  conspicuous. 
Mr.  Weaver  explained  to  Randon  that  this  was  an 
imperative  necessity. 

"  You  got  to  have  'em  marked  plain  where  people 
can't  help  but  see  it,  or  you  wouldn't  have  a  chair  left 
inside  of  six  weeks.  Nobody  means  to  take  what  ain't 
theirs  —  it  isn't  that  I "  he  said  magnanimously. 
"  They  just  see  a  handy  little  chair  that  folds  up  flat 
like  these  pic-nic  chairs  and  the  ones  they  have  on  the 
Coney  Island  boats,  you  know,  and  they  forget  and 
think  it's  one  of  their  porch-chairs  and  it's  been  around 
the  house  always  and  belongs  to  'em !  "  He  talked  a 
good  deal  to  Randon,  having  as  he  said,  "  taken  a 
shine "  to  the  young  man,  and  thinking  that  he 
looked  lonesome. 

What  Randon  felt,  however,  was  not  lonesomeness, 
but  a  strange  kind  of  enforced  detachment,  intangibly 
and  invisibly  walling  him  off  from  the  company.  Try 
as  he  would  he  could  not  penetrate  it  or  put  it  aside ; 
it  was  as  if  he  had  been  a  figure  under  a  glass  dome. 
He  was  aware  of  them  eyeing  him,  murmuring  about 
him  one  to  another,  as  people  eye  and  murmur  in  an 
exhibition  room ;  and  when  they  met  him  it  was  with 
an  air  so  obviously  unnatural  as  to  puzzle  and  per- 
turb him.  They  conveyed  the  impression,  not  of  hos- 
tility, but  of  what  seemed  to  the  young  fellow  a  singu- 
lar and  causeless  inability  to  meet  him  on  his  own 
ground;  apparently  they  could  no  more  remove  the 
glass  dome  than  he;  it  interposed  in  spite  of,  and  yet 
somehow  because  of  them.  Particularly  was  this  the 
case  with  the  women;  men  accept  one  another  more 


200  THE  NOON-MARK 

readily,  and  Mr.  Weaver  was  most  refreshingly  and 
likably  plain,  kindly  and  sociable.  It  was  impossible 
for  Randon  to  understand  why  Mrs.  Weaver,  for 
instance,  could  not  emulate  him.  "  Let  me  take  that," 
he  said,  advancing*  his  hands  to  the  huge  tray  of 
lemonade-glasses  and  cups  of  coffee  she  Avas  passing 
around ;  but  she  evaded  the  gesture  precipitately. 

"  Oh  my,  no,  thanks,  Mr.  McQuair.  I'm  helping 
out  purposely.  I'm  used  to  it  anyhow,  and  you 
ain't,"  she  said,  giggling  uneasily  without  mirth,  and 
went  on.  Randon  made  humorous  complaint  to 
Nettie. 

"Here,  give  me  something  to  do,  won't  you? 
Nobody  will  let  me,  and  I'd  like  to  be  made  use  of." 

"  They  think  you  don't  know  how.  You've  been 
waited  on  all  your  life,  you  know ;  and  everybody  here 
does  their  own  work,"  said  the  girl  in  a  harsh  voice, 
looking  at  him  queerly.  She  did  not  know  what 
impelled  her  to  this  speech ;  there  was  a  dull  pain  at 
her  heart.  It  was  not  lessened  by  the  perplexity,  the 
faint  recoil  she  discerned  in  her  lover's  expression. 

"  Even  so,  if  you'll  just  tell  me  what  to  do  — ?  "  he 
began  awkwardly;  her  guess  was  right  in  so  far  as 
something  he  sensed  in  the  thought  underlying  her 
words  troubled  and  humiliated  him ;  it  seemed  unwor- 
thy of  her. 

"  No,  never  mind.  There  isn't  anything.  You 
don't  need  to  help,"  said  Nettie  in  the  same  hard  man- 
ner, and  she  too  went  on,  leaving  him  in  his  isolation. 
Her  ministrations  were  so  active  and  incessant  there- 
after that  she  had  no  time  to  speak  to  him  again, 
scarcely  even  to  look  at  him,  it  seemed;  and  Julia  felt 
called  on  to  remonstrate. 

"  Nettie,  child,  do  go  in  there  and  set  down  along- 


THK  NOON-MARK  207 

» 

side  your  beau  and  have  a  saucer  of  cream  yourself. 
Xobody'll  think  anything  of  it  to  see  you  two  setting 
together.  You'll  be  tired  to  death.  They're  all 
helped  now  and  anyways  if  there's  anybody  else  comes 
along  or  wants  a  second  time,  I  can  'tend  to  'em.  I  m 
going  to  have  mine  out  here,  anyhow.  Go  on  in  and 
rest  yourself.     He's  in  there,  ain't  he?  " 

"  Yes  I  was  just  talking  to  him.  He  wanted  to 
help,  but  I  wouldn't  let  him.  I  didn't  want  him  com- 
in<*  round  here  in  all  this  muss." 

"Uh-hnh,  that's  right.     He  might  get  something 
spilled  on  him  — cream  or  something  on  his  pants. 
That  fine  gents'  goods  spots  something  awful,"  said 
Julia,  pushing  a  string  of  hair  out  of  her  eyes  with 
one  hand,  and  digging  the  spoon  down  into  the  freezer 
with  the  other.     Nettie  startled  her  by  a  sharp  laugh. 
After   the   refreshment   period,    there    occurred   a 
species  of  pause  in  the  festivities,  when  nobody  seemed 
exactly  to  know  what  to  do,  or  what  was  expected 
next      Randon  overheard  one  lady  suggesting  to  her 
husband  in  an  energetic  whisper  that  they  make  their 
adieux  and  go  home,  because,  as  she  very  practically 
pointed  out,  they  couldn't  visit  with  the  bride  and 
groom  the  whole  rest  of  the  day ;  and  furthermore,  as 
it  appeared,  she  designed  to  cut  up  a  half  peck  of 
tomatoes  before  getting  supper,  and  set  them  to  drain 
for  catsup.     Mr.  Weaver  genially  offered  a  resolution 
that  they  all  drink  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Elmer  Hands  hea  1th 
in  a  final  bumper  of  lemonade,  and  then  the  old  folks 
clear  out  so  as  to  leave  the  young  ones  room  for  danc- 
ing he  had  a  Victrola,  and  if  a  couple  of  these  husky 
boys  wanted,  why,  they  were  welcome  to  go  and  get 
it  and  some  first-rate  rag-time  records  that  were  there ; 
his    house    was    right    next    door.     The    suggestion 


208  THE  NOON-MARK 

brought  forth  a  round  of  applause,  but  otherwise  fell 
rather  flat;  no  one,  amongst  either  the  old  folks  or 
the  young  apparently  possessed  the  initiative  to  act 
on  it.  Mrs.  Weaver  could  not  go  anyhow;  she  was 
now  helping  to  clear  away,  as  busily  as  she  had  prev- 
iously helped  to  serve;  judging  by  the  eagerness  with 
which  this  job  was  sought,  it  relieved  the  embarrassing 
inaction  for  many  of  the  older  guests.  Then  some- 
body had  the  happy  thought  to  propose  singing.  It 
turned  out  upon  a  canvass,  that  the  only  songs 
whereof  both  words  and  tune  were  familiar  to  the 
entire  company  were  "  Auld  Lang  Syne  "  and  "  My 
Country,  'T  is  Of  Thee,"  which  were  accordingly  per- 
formed in  chorus,  led  by  Mrs.  Stegemiller,  who  sang 
soprano  in  the  Seventh  Baptist  choir.  Poor  Frank, 
especially,  enjoyed  the  music ;  not  having  been  able  to 
go  to  church  in  years,  it  did  do  him  good,  he  said. 

What  with  one  thing  and  another,  the  afternoon 
wore  by  until  it  was  time  for  Millie  to  go  upstairs  and 
change  into  her  travelling  dress;  they  were  going  to 
Atlantic  City.  This  was  the  signal  —  not  wholly  un- 
welcome—  for  a  general  uprising  and  scatteration ; 
they  departed  in  pairs  and  groups,  only  those  remain- 
ing of  the  waggishly-inclined  younger  element  who 
had  laid  plans  for  clandestinely  attaching  old  shoes 
stuffed  with  rice  to  the  rear  axle  of  the  bridal  hack, 
and  placards  lettered  staringly  with  the  announce- 
ment: "WE  HAVE  JUST  BEEN  MARRIED." 
Randon  did  not  join  these  conspirators ;  after  repeated 
attempts  he  at  length  succeeded  in  waylaying  Nettie 
to  ask  her  when  he  would  see  her  again.  She  was 
on  her  way  from  the  back  porch  with  Millie's  silk 
umbrella  from  which  she  had  just  humanely  emptied 
a  quantity  of  rice  introduced  into  its  folds  by  one  of 


THE  NOON-MARK  209 

the  humorists;  and  she  hesitated  a  bare  second,  not 
looking  at  him,  with  her  lips  compressed,  while  she 
re-rolled  the  umbrella  and  snapped  the  band. 

"You  can  see  me  most  any  time  —  down-town  or 
anywhere,"  she  said  indifferently. 

The  young  man  looked  at  her,  hurt  and  bewildered. 
"  Yes,  but  this  is  Saturday.  May  I  come  to-morrow 
—  come  here,  I  mean?  " 

"If  you  want." 

"  Of  course,  if  I'll  be  in  the  way  — ?  "  said  Randon, 
glancing  about  with  some  confused  idea  that  the 
house  would  probably  be  in  the  disorder  that  he  knew 
irritated  her.  "  But  we  can  go  and  take  a  walk  some- 
where — " 

"  You  don't  have  to  come  a  foot  inside  the  house. 
As  long  as  you've  kept  out  of  it  this  long,  I  guess  it 
won't  worry  you  to  death  to  keep  out  of  it  a  while 
longer.  Of  course  you  had  to  come  inside  to-day," 
said  Nettie. 

Her  tone  and  manner  literally  stunned  him.  What 
was  the  matter?  What  had  happened?  Character- 
istically, the  young  fellow  supposed  himself  to  be  at 
fault  somehow;  he  could  not  guess  what  he  had  said 
or  done,  but  it  had  been  borne  in  upon  him  more  than 
once  during  the  course  of  this  day  that  with  the  best 
intention  in  the  world  he  might  ignorantly  give  mon- 
strous offense.  "Well  then,  at  three  o'clock?  And 
you'll  send  me  away  without  mercy  if  you're  too  tired. 
I  —  I  don't  want  to  persecute  you,"  he  said  humbly. 

Alas,  for  once  his  chivalry  served  him  ill !  In  Net- 
tie's present  unreasoning  and  unhappily  suspicious 
mood,  it  smacked  to  her  of  hypocrisy.  He  was  using 
one  of  those  facile  devices  with  which  his  kind  of 
people  perpetually  smoothed  over  all  uglinesses ;  they 


210  THE  NOON-MARK 

believed  themselves  entitled  to  sneer  at  or  make  fun 
of  you  as  much  as  they  pleased  behind  your  back, 
provided  they  were  polite  to  your  face,  she  thought 
bitterly.  And  inwardly  she  was  actually  capable  of 
charging  him  with  deliberately  taking  advantage  of 
her  with  his  "  fancy  manners  "  as  she  branded  them ; 
he  knew  very  well  that  she  could  not  talk  back  to 
him  in  the  same  style;  he  knew  she  wasn't  that  kind; 
she  was  honest,  she  always  meant  every  word  she  said, 
she  —  poor  Nettie!  And  poor  Randon,  for  that  mat- 
ter !     The  times  were  sadly  out  of  joint. 

However,  Randon  was  so  little  aware  of  the  nature 
of  the  complaint  against  him  —  which  indeed  would 
have  been  almost  beyond  his  understanding  —  that  he 
only  told  himself  regretfully  that  he  and  Nettie  were 
due  to  tiff  some  time  or  other ;  he  had  probably  behaved 
like  a  chump  without  knowing  it,  and  then  too  she 
was  all  tired  out  with  this  infernal  wedding,  so  that 
something  had  angered  her  which  she  might  have 
laughed  at,  any  other  time.  He  was  glad  that  Millie 
was  married  at  last  and  out  of  the  way ;  he  had  never 
fancied  her  much,  and  now  said  to  himself  roundly 
that  Hands  was,  if  anything,  too  good  for  her.  Hands 
was  a  nice  fellow;  he  deserved  to  have  a  nice  wife  and 
home;  whether  he  was  getting  either,  Mr.  McQuair 
had  sagacious  doubts.  Millie  was  dazzlingly  pretty, 
she  was  bright  enough,  she  had  very  sweet  ways, 
hut — .  But,  thought  Randon  profoundly,  she  was 
"  on  the  make  "  that  girl.  She  thought  altogether  too 
much  of  herself  and  was  altogether  too  determined  to 
have  the  best  of  everything;  she'd  keep  Elmer  with 
his  nose  to  the  grindstone.  Still,  if  Elmer  was  suited 
—  Randon  ruminated  philosophically,  and  filled  his 
pipe.     Now  Nettie  —  all  was  not  right  just  now,  but 


THE  NOON-MARK  2ll 

he  would  find  out  what  the  trouble  was  and  make  up 
with  her  to-morrow.  Mrs.  McQuair  noticed  his 
abstraction,  but  in  her  ancient  wisdom  said  nothing, 
and  asked  no  questions  about  the  wedding. 


XIV 

THE  next  day  when,  in  the  mid-afternoon, 
Randon  reached  the  house,  it  exhibited  that 
disconsolate  aspect  peculiar  to  every  lately 
abandoned  scene  of  merry-making.  Twists  of 
waxed  paper  and  a  vagrant  box-lid  or  two  blew  about 
the  lawn,  and  clung  among  the  dead  flower-stalks  in 
the  beds  along  the  foundation ;  there  were  dangerous 
little  slippery  islets  of  mashed  chocolate-drops  dotted 
over  the  porch  floor  and  steps;  and  rice,  confetti,  cake- 
crumbs,  withered  rags  of  flowers  everywhere.  In  the 
hall,  Mr.  Weaver's  chairs,  folded  and  unfolded,  singly 
and  in  stacks,  dominated  a  chaos  of  other  furniture ; 
there  was  bedding  draped  at  random,  and  in  the 
middle  of  the  floor  a  wash-basin,  two-thirds  full,  the 
surface  of  the  water  mantled  with  a  curdled  scum  of 
stale  suds,  contributed  a  strangely  unwholesome 
touch,  all  its  own.  Some  one  had  improvised  a  table 
and  sideboard  out  of  the  lower  step  of  the  stairs,  as 
was  evidenced  by  the  presence  there  of  one  of  the 
caterer's  buckets  with  the  cream-canister  inside 
emptied  save  for  a  spoonful  of  unappetizing  fluid  de- 
posit in  the  bottom  of  it;  there  were  two  or  three 
saucers  with  more  of  the  same  deposit,  and  the  inex- 
haustible cake-crumbs  over  all.  A  person  wouldn't 
feel  right  having  a  lot  of  cleaning  and  straighten- 
ing-up  going  on  on  Sunday,  Mrs.  Stieffel  explained,  in 
a  weakly  smiling  flurry,  clutching  a  kimono  together 
around  her  neck  and  shoulders;  she  had  opened  the 

212 


THE  NOON-MARK  213 

door  after  a  prolonged  wait  and  sundry  alarms  and 
excursions,  the  noise  of  which  penetrated  quite  dis- 
tinctly to  Randon  as  he  stood  outside.  It  continued 
and  now  resolved  itself  into  a  shrill  rumble  of  casters 
charging  across  the  upstairs  floors,  the  stubborn  and 
shoving  progress  of  other  articles  of  furniture  un-cas- 
tered,  and  brief  breathless  commands,  warnings, 
exhortations. 

"Nettie,  she  would  go  ahead  with  some  of  it, 
though/'  said  Mrs.  Stieffel  with  another  feeble  smile. 
"  You  know  how  Nettie  is.  Of  course  with  all  I  got 
to  do,  the  children  and  Mr.  Stieffel  being  an  invalid 
like  he  is,  I  simply  got  to  let  things  go  sometimes,  but 
Nettie  being  in  an  office  she's  got  office  ways,  and  she 
just  won't  rest  till  everything's  in  place.  You'll  have 
to  excuse  my  appearance,  Mr.  McQuair;  I  ain't  hardly 
had  time  for  anything." 

Randon  murmured  something  in  undue  embarrass- 
ment; he  was  miserably  conscious  that  he  did  not 
want  to  see  Nettie's  home  looking  thus,  and  Nettie's 
mother —  who  for  her  part  was  not  in  the  least 
embarrassed  —  inadequately  kimono-ed,  amiably  vol- 
uble, repelled  him  against  his  will.  "  Maybe  I'd  bet- 
ter not  stay  — ?  " 

"  Now,  Mr.  McQuair,  don't  you  go  imagining  you 
put  us  out  one  minute !  We  love  to  have  you  come  in 
any  time  just  like  it  was  your  own  house.  I  never 
was  one  to  make  company  of  anybody,  let  alone  you !  ' 
cried  out  Maggie.  She  was  thoroughly  sincere;  it 
never  entered  her  simple  head  to  worry  about  com- 
fort, style,  conventions  in  her  own  house  or  elsewhere; 
and  her  heart  warmed  to  Randon,  like  the  hearts  of 
almost  all  the  women  of  her  age.  Some  quality  they 
perceived,  or  fancied  they  perceived  in  the  youth,  won 


214  THE  NOON-MARK 

them  unconsciously.     "  It  don't  make  any  difference 
to  me  our  being  a  little  bit  upset,  if  it  don't  to  you," 
she  assured  him  cheerfully.     "  I  always  say  people 
got  to  take  us  the  way  they  find  us.     You  just  set 
down  anywhere  —  wrell,  I  guess  you  better  not  go  in 
the   parlor   on    'count    of    Pop  —  Mr.    Stieffel.     We 
couldn't  take  the  trouble  to  put  his  bed  up  last  night, 
we  was  all  so  tuckered  out;  we  just  fixed  him  a  mat- 
tress on  the  floor ;  that's  how  these  blankets  and  things 
come  to  be  around  airing.     Don't  look  quite  as  swell 
as  it  did  yesterday,  does  it?     Watch  out  for  them 
saucers,  Mr.  McQuair.     Roy  and  Helen  was  having  a 
party  with  some  of  the  left-over  cream.     We  just  been 
picnicking  to-day,  you  know,  we  didn't  try  to  get  any 
regular  set-down  meals,  and  there  wTas  a  whole  lot 
of  stuff  that  oughta  be  et  up,  as  long  as  we  had  to 
pay  for  it  anyhow,  and  it  don't  keep  any  len'th  of  time. 
I  guess  the  caterers  do  that  on  purpose  —  get  you  to 
order  too  much,  you  know,  only  I  don't  see  what  they'd 
make  by  it ;  they  might  sell  it  to  somebody  else,  it  can't 
make  any  difference  to  them  who  they  sell  to.     But 
everybody  says  it's  always  that  way  —  a  lot  left  over, 
I  mean.     You  just  set  down  anywhere  —  wait  till  I 
take  that  old  basin  out  of  your  way.     I  told  Minnie 
she  should  take  and  empty  it  directly  Pop  —  Mr. 
Stieffel  —  got  through,  but  that's  how  children  do, 
you  know.     They  can't  remember  anything  two  min- 
utes.    Well,    we    don't   always    look   like    this,    Mr. 
McQuair,  but  you  understand,  anyhow.     I'll  tell  Net 
you're  here." 

Randon  gingerly  selected  what  appeared  to  be  the 
steadiest  chair,  while  Mrs.  Stieffel,  holding  the  wash- 
basin at  a  perilous  slant,  proceeded  to  tell  Nettie  by 
the  admirably  direct  and  effortless  method  of  bawling 


THE  NOON-MARK  215 

up  the  stairs  in  a  high,  carrying  sing-song  :"Oh  —  oh, 
Nettie !  " 

"What?" 

"  Come  on  down.  Somebody's  here  t'  see  you," 
answered  her  mother  roguishly,  glancing  and  smiling 
at  the  young  man. 

"  Oh !  "  Randon  heard  her  put  something  down ; 
she  seemed  to  hesitate,  standing  still  for  an  instant, 
then  moved  to  the  stairs. 

"  For  the  gracious'  sake,  ain't  you  going  to  take  that 
rag  off  your  head?  "  said  Miss  Julia  Stieffel's  voice, 
loudly  sibilant.  Nettie  made  a  negative  sound.  She 
came  down  rather  slowly,  holding  some  sort  of  loose 
rubbish  bundled  together  in  a  newspaper,  said 
"  Hello "  to  Randon  from  the  landing,  and  inter- 
rupted his  greeting  by  a  sharp  warning  to  her  mother. 

"  Look  out,  Ma,  you're  letting  that  water  slop  all 
over  — " 

"  Oh,  it's  just  water,  it  won't  hurt  anything,"  said 
Mrs.  Stieffel  easily,  bringing  the  basin  to  a  level.  She 
started  for  the  dining-room.  "  Well,  I  guess  you 
young  ones  ain't  crazy  for  me  to  stick  around  — " 

Randon  began  to  speak,  but  Nettie  interrupted  him 
again.  "  Wait  till  I  take  this  stuff  and  put  it  some- 
where, will  you?  Where  you  want  me  to  put  it?  It's 
that  stuff  of  yours,  you  know.  I  didn't  like  to  throw 
it  out  unless  you  said  to,  but  it  was  on  the  closet-floor 
in  the  childrens'  room  and  they'd  messed  it  all  around 
into  their  shoes  and  everything,"  she  said,  pushing  by 
him.  The  newspaper  contained  a  quantity  of  loose 
black  flakes  of  some  unguessable  material,  part  of  it 
coagulated  in  misshapen  pills,  little  and  big;  there 
were  also  tangled  nests  of  black  pack-thread  and  hair- 
like gilt  wire,  a  pair  of  scissors  with  one  blade  broken 


216  THE  NOON-MARK 

short  off,  a  teacup  about  half  full  of  malodorous  paste 
stiffened  to  the  texture  of  cheese,  three  or  four  cloves, 
aud  a  diminutive  carton  lettered:  "LIGHTNING 
CORN-PLASTERS." 

"  What  do  you  want  done  with  it?  It  doesn't  look 
to  me  as  if  it  was  much  good  —  sort  of  stale,  isn't 
it?  "  said  Nettie,  addressing  her  mother  brusquely. 

She  did  not  look  at  Randon ;  he  stood  by,  a  helpless 
witness  of  intimacies  he  would  have  given  worlds  to 
avoid  witnessing,  his  disrelish  not  lessened  by  a 
stealthy  consciousness  of  comedy  in  the  scene. 

"Well?  What  do  you  want  done  with  it?" 
repeated  Nettie,  slightly  elevating  her  voice  with  an 
effect  of  exasperated  patience. 

Mrs.  Stieffel  gave  an  exclamation  of  concern,  sur- 
veying the  accumulation.  "  Oh  my,  it's  those  beads! 
I  declare  I  forgot  all  about  'em.  You  make  them  out 
of  rose-leaves  —  I  got  the  rule  for  'em  out  of  Hearths 
And  Homes/'  she  interpolated  in  an  explanatory  par- 
enthesis to  Randon.  "  According  to  them,  they  were 
perfectly  grand,  and  just  as  easy  as  easy  to  make,  only 
a  little  complicated,  of  course.  But  I  don't  know  — 
mine  wouldn't  stick  together  somehow;  I  must  have 
got  the  paste  too  cooked  —  or  maybe  not  cooked 
enough.  I  guess  you've  simply  got  to  experiment  till 
you  get  everything  just  right."  Here  Mrs.  Stieffel 
shifted  the  basin  to  one  arm,  a  position  not  unattended 
with  risk  to  its  contents,  and  explored  amongst  the 
beads  doubtfully.  "  'F  I  just  had  the  time  —  oh,  for 
the  goodness  — .' "  She  caught  sight  of  the  corn- 
plasters  with  a  start  of  consternation  that  sent  waves 
of  cold  suds  slapping  on  the  floor  with  a  resounding 
plop,  but  Maggie  paid  no  heed ;  she  "  palmed  "  the  box 
with  the  dexterity  of  a  conjurer,  casting  a  shamed 


THE  NOON-MARK  217 

glance  into  Randon's  face,  while  the  color  inundated 
her  own.  "  Well,  I'm  sure  I  don't  know  how  that 
come  to  be  in  there,"  she  murmured  in  painful  con- 
fusion. "  You  just  got  to  excuse  it,  Mr.  McQuair  —  I 
don't  know  what  you'll  think  of  us  — ! '  It  was  plain 
to  him  that  the  casual  presence  of  a  box  of  corn-plas- 
ters contained  for  her  all  the  elements  of  impropriety, 
not  to  say  indecency. 

"  Want  me  to  throw  'em  out,  then?  "  demanded  Net- 
tie, as  before. 

"  Why,  I  don't  know  —  of  course  these  first  ones 
were  a  failure,  but  I  b'lieve  I  could  get  'em  right  the 
next  time.  Mis'  Weaver  said  she'd  order  a  necklace. 
I  might  work  up  a  nice  little  trade  right  around  here 

—  don't  you  b'lieve  I  could?"  said  Maggie  wistfully, 
appealing  to  Randon.  "  You  can't  judge  by  these,  but 
they  were  awfully  pretty  in  the  magazine  pictures." 

"  Well  —  I  —  I   don't   know   much   about   jewelry 

—  what  ladies  like,  and  all  that  —  but  it  seems  as  if 
the  —  the  beads  might  be  very  odd  and  interesting  — " 
Randon  was  lamely  stammering,  when  Nettie  cut  the 
discussion  short  ruthlessly. 

"  Oh,  he's  just  saying  that,  Ma !  You  can't  make 
anything  out  of  that  stuff,  and  it  would  be  just  trash 
if  you  did  make  it.     Besides  you'll  never  finish  'em 

—  you  never  finish  anything.  Here,  let  me  get  by 
you !  "     She  pushed  out  of  the  room. 

Her  voice  and  manner  had  been  the  opposite  of 
gentle,  but  Mrs.  Stieffel  gave  no  evidence  of  hurt  feel- 
ings ;  instead,  she  looked  at  the  young  man,  and  spoke 
not  without  a  note  of  indulgent  admiration :  "  Isn't 
that  Net  all  over,  though?  She's  always  just  that 
quick  and  decided." 

Randon  had  nothing  to  say.     The  spectacle  of  ineffi- 


218  THE  NOON-MARK 

ciency,  whether  conscious  and  hopeless,  or  as  happily 
visionary  as  Mrs.  Stieffel's,  is  one  of  the  most  pathetic 
in  life  to  the  average  humane  beholder;  we  do  not 
always  realize  that  if  pitiful  to  look  upon,  it  must 
also  be,  in  the  long  run,  maddening  to  live  with; 
doubly  maddening  to  one  of  Nettie's  temperament. 
This  episode  was  only  one  of  a  hundred  that  almost 
daily  tried  the  girl's  soul ;  but  Randon  did  not  know 
that.  He  could  not  see  that  the  very  qualities  he  most 
admired  in  her  of  courage,  and  resolution  and  loyal 
tenacity  of  purpose  defeated  a  conscientious  struggle 
to  be  patient  with  her  mother.  Nettie,  even  in  a 
shrouding  bungalow-apron  with  a  fillet  of  towel  bind- 
ing up  her  burnt-brown  locks,  still  looked  the  clean, 
graceful,  dauntless  Diana  she  had  always  figured  for 
him ;  but  in  the  young  man's  dismayed  view,  she  acted 
like  an  underbred  girl  in  a  bad  temper.  And  about 
what?  Good  Heavens,  about  what  was  this  ignoble 
outburst?  The  truth  was  brutal  enough,  no  need  to 
tell  it  so  brutally,  no  need  to  tell  it  at  all,  for  that 
matter !  And  to  her  mother !  And  before  him !  All 
the  ancient  inhibitions  of  his  caste,  of  his  sex,  rose  in 
rebellion;  and  impelled,  no  doubt,  by  that  Mephisto- 
phelian  opportunist  who  tenants  all  our  minds,  what- 
ever misgivings  he  had  hitherto  concealed  from  him- 
self, now  rushed  clamorously  into  the  foreground  of 
his  thought. 

Mrs.  Stieffel  wavered  out  of  the  room,  and  presently 
Nettie  came  back.  She  closed  the  door,  and  began 
to  untie  the  dust-cloth  on  her  head,  an  operation  which 
prevented  her  looking  directly  at  the  young  man.  He 
was  still  standing,  holding  his  hat  and  overcoat ;  and 
after  a  moment  of  silence,  managed  to  say :  "  You  are 
—  you  must  be  very  tired." 


THE  NOON-MARK  219 

"  No,  I'm  not  tired/'  said  Nettie,  concisely.  She 
got  the  rag  off,  shook  it  out,  and  folded  it,  matching 
corners  with  meticulous  accuracy.  "  Don't  go  to 
making  excuses  for  me.  I'm  always  just  like  this.  I 
should  think  you'd  know  it  by  this  time,"  she  added, 
without  acerbity,  in  her  habitual  manner,  matter-of- 
fact  and  straightforward. 

"Excuses?"  Randon  echoed  confusedly:  "I  —  I 
don't  —  that  is,  I'm  not  — " 

"  I'm  always  this  way,"  said  Nettie  again,  now 
beginning  deliberately  to  remove  her  apron.  "  The 
house  is  always  like  this  too,  and  my  father  and  mother 
and  all  of  us.  I  never  thought  about  it  before  —  you 
see  it's  my  home  and  I'm  used  to  it  —  but  I  guess  it 
seems  kind  of  funny  and  different  to  you.  You  must 
notice  the  difference.  /  do,  anyhow.  I  mean,  I 
notice  it  now.  I  noticed  it  like  everything  yesterday. 
It  did  sort  of  upset  me  for  a  while,"  she  confessed, 
reflectively  eyeing  him  as  if  engaged  in  comparisons 
which  were  not  unkind  —  which  were,  in  fact,  quite 
impersonal.  "  But  that  was  silly.  There's  nothing 
to  get  mad  about.  Some  people  are  one  way  and 
some  people  are  another  way,  and  that's  all  there  is 
to  it.  You  might  just  as  well  make  up  your  mind  to 
the  differences.  It's  something  that  goes  down  too 
deep  to  be  changed." 

All  this  she  said  in  her  most  everyday  fashion,  with- 
out the  most  remote  suggestion  of  effort  to  control 
feeling;  the  wedding,  the  last  play  they  had  seen 
together,  the  humors  of  her  day  at  the  bank  might 
have  been  her  theme.  Nevertheless  there  was  no 
possibility  of  misunderstanding  her,  even  of  pretend- 
ing to  misunderstand.  Indeed,  Randon,  who  was 
intrinsically  as  direct  and  open  as  herself,  felt  no 


220  THE  NOON-MARK 

impulse  toward  pretenses;  all  he  could  think  of, 
momentarily,  was  the  fantastic  cruelty  of  their  posi- 
tion. 

"  If  I  have  hurt  you  —  if  I  was  — "  he  began  at 
length,  but  Nettie  arrested  him  with  a  little  gesture. 

"  No,  indeed! "  she  said  earnestly.  "  You  never 
hurt  anybody's  feelings  in  your  life,  Random  And 
nobody  else  has  said  anything,  either,"  she  went  on 
quickly,  forestalling  him.  "  They  wouldn't,  you 
know,"  said  Nettie  with  gravity.  "  People  don't  want 
to  mix  into  other  peoples'  business  and  make  trouble. 
At  least  most  people  don't;  everybody  in  general's 
pretty  nice,  /  think.  No,  it  isn't  anybody's  fault,  and 
nothing's  happened.  It's  just  that  I've  been  thinking, 
my  own  self,  that  we  made  a  mistake,  and  we  ought 
to  stop  before  we  make  a  worse  one."  She  finished 
folding  the  apron  in  a  tidy  roll,  having  uttered  the 
last  words  with  a  pin  between  her  lips  which  she  now 
took  out  and  quilted  dexterously  into  the  bundle,  fac- 
ing him  meanwhile  with  steady  eyes.  She  divested 
the  situation  of  every  shred  of  romance ;  Randon  was 
being  given  back  his  freedom  in  perhaps  as  easy  a 
way  as,  all  things  considered,  could  be  contrived ;  the 
young  fellow's  main  distress  was  the  secret  conscious- 
ness that  he  was  not  distressed  at  all!  He  was 
relieved,  and  the  relief  shamed  him.  But  no  man  on 
earth,  were  he  ever  so  much  in  earnest,  could  play  the 
broken-hearted  lover  to  such  a  Juliet ;  sighs  and  plead- 
ings and  passion  would  be  ludicrous,  even  if  their 
essential  falsity  had  not  revolted  him. 

"  I  think  we'd  better  kind  of  make  a  new  start,  just 
plain  friends,  you  know,"  said  Nettie.  "  We'd  never 
get  along  together,  married,  in  the  wide  world.  If 
we'd  been  exactly  suited  to  each  other,  it  would  have 


THE  NOON-MARK  221 

been  all  right,  even  if  your  folks  and  mine  didn't  — 
didn't  —  well,  mix  —  you  see  what  I  mean?  But  the 
truth  is,  we  aren't  so  terribly  congenial.  And  getting 
married  —  it's  taking  too  big  a  chance."  Nettie  shook 
her  head  wisely.  "  I  wouldn't  feel  right  to  go  into 
anything  so  uncertain.  And  I  don't  believe  in  this 
hit-or-miss  marrying  and  getting  divorced  when  you 
get  tired  of  it.  I  know  you  don't  either.  That's  one 
thing  we  do  agree  about." 

Randon  stumbled  amongst  phrases  about  his  own 
unworthiness.  He  meant  them ;  he  seemed  to  himself 
contemptible.  All  the  while  he  knew  that,  as  the 
world  goes,  he  had  done  nothing;  to  release  himself 
from  this  unlucky  contract  had  never  occurred  to  him. 
Nettie  herself  was  dismissing  him,  as  scores  of  girls 
have  dismissed  scores  of  men  ever  since  the  game 
began ;  all  was  right  and  proper  and  according  to  pre- 
cedent ;  but  somehow  that  fact  did  not  avail  to  rehabili- 
tate him  in  his  own  eyes.  The  trouble  was  that  Mr. 
Randon's  self-conceit  had  been  severely  shaken;  he 
stood  convicted  of  gross  instability.  First  he  had 
wanted  Nettie  with  all  his  might;  and  now  with  all 
his  might  he  could  not  make  himself  want  her!  He 
asked  her  forgiveness,  dimly  foreseeing  that  he  would 
never  obtain  his  own. 

After  he  had  gone,  Nettie  slowly  climbed  the  stairs, 
carrying  her  two  bundles.  At  the  top  her  aunt  con- 
fronted her,  searching  her  face  with  eyes  of  harrowing 
anxiety.  "  Nettie,  I  heard  it,  I  heard  every  word ! ': 
she  whispered.  It  was  not  an  apology;  the  thought 
of  apology  never  crossed  her  mind.  Reticence  and  a 
regard  for  privacy  were  not  essential,  by  Stieffel 
standards,  either  to  comfort  or  polite  living.  "  Did 
you  mean  it?"  whispered  Julia  tensely. 


222  THE  NOON-MARK 

"Did  I  mean  it?"  Nettie  repeated  after  her. 
"  Yes,  of  course  I  meant  it.  I  don't  say  things  I  don't 
mean." 

"Well,  I  didn't  know  —  I  thought  perhaps  you 
didn't  re'lize  —  I  thought  you  might  not  know  how  it 
sounded — "  faltered  the  other.  Logically  and  con- 
sistently, Julia  should  have  been  immensely  relieved 
at  this  turn  of  events;  had  she  not  been  the  first  to 
perceive  the  unsuitability  of  the  match,  its  promise  of 
catastrophe?  But  now,  as  she  strove  to  read  her 
niece's  features,  miserable  pity  and  disappointment 
distorted  her  own.  "  Oh,  Nettie !  "  she  quavered  on 
a  sob :  "  He  won't  come  back !  He  won't  ever  come 
back !     Did  you  know  that?  "     The  tears  ran  down. 

"Why,  yes,  I  knew  it.  Don't  take  on  so,  Aunt 
Julia!  It's  all  right,"  said  the  girl.  She  had  no 
tears,  though  without  doubt  the  fires  were  all  gone  out 
on  some  queer  little  altar  within  her;  the  splendid 
image  —  which  very  likely  had  clay  feet !  —  lay  prone 
and  shattered;  the  shrine  was  cold.  Poor  Nettie, 
being  mercifully  devoid  of  imagination,  did  not  set  to 
pitying  herself,  or  indulging  in  tragic  metaphors.  It 
was  enough  for  her  that  he  was  gone,  and  would  never 
come  back;  that  was  over  and  done  with,  out  of  her 
life  for  good  and  all,  she  thought,  comforting  and 
quieting  the  older  woman,  unaware  of  irony. 


XV 

THERE  is,  after  all,  no  such  tragic  difficulty 
about  adjusting  oneself  to  life,  at  twenty-five, 
even  when  a  part  of  it,  perhaps  the  chief  part, 
seems  to  be  definitely  over  and  what  is  left  sterile  and 
desolate.  Nettie  found  herself  getting  up  and  going 
to  work  with  the  same  interest  as  ever  and  taking  the 
same  zest  in  the  day's  accomplishment,  and  coming 
home,  as  usual,  reasonably  tired,  not  dissatisfied  yet 
promising  herself  to  do  more  and  do  it  better  on  the 
morrow.  She  was  no  hack,  though  taking  down 
stenographic  notes  and  transcribing  them  afterwards 
with  much  hammering  on  the  typewriter  may  present 
every  appearance  of  hack-work  on  the  surface.  What 
raised  it  above  that  class  was  precisely  what  raised 
Nettie  herself  above  the  ordinary  class  of  office-girls ; 
it  reflected  her  plain  intelligence  and  that  other  qual- 
ity eluding  definition  which  has  been  called  temper- 
ament. She  had  a  turn  for  business  as  distinctly  as 
another  young  woman  might  have  had  for  art.  Order, 
accuracy,  and  that  fetich  of  the  American  world  of 
affairs,  "  getting  results,"  had  always  been  her  hap- 
piest and  most  successful  preoccupations;  she  was 
only  a  little  less  happy  now,  and  still  successful. 

In  one  —  her  only  —  moment  of  weakness,  she  went 
and  bought  an  extravagantly  handsome  set  of  furs, 
muff  and  neckpiece,  with  some  of  her  hoarded 
trousseau-money;  it  was  a  concession,  a  species  of 
balm    which    might    well    strike    the    philosophical 

223 


224  THE  NOON-MARK 

observer  as  pitiful  and  funny,  however  effective;  but, 
in  fact,  no  sooner  was  it  done  than  Nettie  herself 
denounced  the  performance.  What  had  she  been 
thinking  of?  All  that  money!  Well,  there  was  one 
consolation :  the  furs  would  last  a  good  while,  five  or 
six  seasons  at  least  in  their  present  style,  and  five  or 
six  more  made  over.  Looked  at  that  way,  they  were 
still  a  folly,  but  a  kind  of  sensible  folly.  And  to 
insure  their  prospects,  she  kept  them  locked  up  when 
not  in  use;  there  was  a  risk  of  informal  borrowing 
otherwise.  "  Lucky  Millie  isn't  at  home  here  any 
more  —  though  I  suppose  it's  sort  of  mean  for  me  to 
feel  so  about  it.  But  I  never  could  be  sure  of  having 
a  single  thing  ready  to  put  on  when  she  was  around," 
she  reflected.  Indeed,  it  could  be  seen  at  a  glance  that 
Millie  was  no  longer  around.  The  little  room,  albeit 
Nettie  now  shared  it  with  the  next  youngest  Stieffel 
daughter,  was  a  model  of  cool  neatness.  Nettie  could 
impose  terms  on  her  junior,  and  they  were  severe 
terms  as  regarded  cleanliness,  tidiness  and  the  inviol- 
ability of  property  rights. 

She  saw  Randon,  of  course,  from  time  to  time ;  pass- 
ing on  the  street,  he  would  raise  his  hat  to  her  —  that 
movement  the  sight  of  which  always  caused  her  a 
foolish  pang.  Nobody  else  did  it  as  he  did,  nobody ! 
Their  encounters,  however,  became  less  and  less  fre- 
quent; she  deliberately  chose  an  hour  for  going  and 
coming  when  she  knew  he  would  not  be  on  the  car; 
and,  as  it  happened,  Randon  presently  ceased  to  tenant 
the  Macdonald  Building  and  the  desk  in  Judge  Stan- 
ley's office.  Nettie  heard  that  he  had  set  up  for  him- 
self at  the  other  end  of  town  in  a  quarter  populous 
with  young  members  of  the  bar,  convenient  to  the 
Court-House.     The   news    came   through    her   Aunt 


THE  NOON-MARK  225 

Julia  who  continued  to  officiate  as  Mrs.  McQuair's 
seamstress,  just  as  if  no  other  connection  had  ever 
been  contemplated.  They  had  the  habit  of  each  other, 
and  neither  one  knew  how  to  break  off. 

"  She  ain't  ever  said  anything  to  me,  and  I  ain't 
ever  said  anything  to  her,"  Julia  reported.  "  What 
would  be  the  use?  When  you're  old  like  her  and  me, 
you  can't  fly  up  and  make  a  change  all  of  a  sudden.  I 
need  the  money  and  she's  gotta  have  clothes ;  and  we 
got  the  same  ideas  about  things  and  what  style  suits 
her  and  how  much  it's  worth  while  to  spend,  and 
everything.  So  what's  the  use? v  Julia  did  not 
express  her  private  conviction  that  Mrs.  McQuair  was 
too  overjoyed  at  the  recent  event  to  care  about  so 
unimportant  a  detail  as  her  sewing-woman's  associa- 
tion with  it.  The  old  maid  did  not  resent  this  atti- 
tude; her  own  pride  was  satisfied.  Nettie's  position 
was  unassailable;  the  most  waspish,  the  most  cattish 
of  the  "  Society  people  "  could  have  nothing  to  say 
about  the  girl  who,  of  her  own  accord,  had  "  turned 
Ranny  McQuair  down  " ;  the  mere  fact  of  the  turning- 
down  established  Nettie  as  unique,  distinguished, 
superior.  "  They  all  know  she  wasn't  fishing  for  him 
anyhow  —  so  wTho  cares?  "  said  Julia  to  herself  in  an 
oddly  vindictive  triumph.  "  Even  if  all  his  folks  are 
fairly  dancing  on  their  heads,  they're  so  glad  it's  broke 
off,"  she  would  sometimes  finish  with  a  sigh.  Her 
own  state  of  mind  perplexed  her;  she  seemed  at  the 
same  time  to  be  glad  and  sorry ! 

Other  members  of  their  family  and  circle  were  in 
no  such  uncertainty,  notably  Mrs.  Elmer  Hands. 
Seldom  had  the  equable  Millie  been  seen  so  "  put  out  " 
as  when,  on  returning  from  the  honeymoon  journey, 
she  learned  about  the  broken  engagement.     At  first 


226  THE  NOON-MABK 

she  insisted  that  it  was  nothing  more  than  a  lovers' 
tiff ;  Nettie  and  Randon  would  make  up  —  they  must 
make  up  —  it  was  too  silly  —  why,  Nettie  could  not 
even  say  now  what  they  had  quarreled  about !  Come 
back?  Of  course  he'd  come  back  —  that  is,  if  Nettie 
would  merely  crook  her  little  finger;  he  was  aching  for 
an  excuse  to  come  back.  And  what  was  the  sense  of 
Net's  being  so  stiff?  If  that  wasn't  just  like  her, 
always  afraid  as  death  of  being  half-way  nice  to  a 
man,  for  fear  he'd  think  something,  or  somebody  else 
would  think  something.  And  so  on  and  so  on,  act- 
ually getting  quite  flushed  and  shrill-voiced,  almost 
bitter  in  her  irritation.  Nettie  was  astounded  at  this 
display  of  temper,  at  the  vehemence  and  pertinacity 
with  which  Millie  urged  a  reconciliation. 

"  It  isn't  any  question  of  making  up  with  him, 
Millie,"  she  tried  to  explain.  "  We  didn't  have  any 
fuss.  I  just  told  him  plain  out  that  I  didn't  believe 
we'd  get  along.  And  I  still  don't  believe  it.  It's  all 
settled,  and  I'm  not  going  back  on  what  I've  done. 
You  never  knew  me  to,  so  you  might  as  well  let  me 
alone.  There  isn't  anything  in  it  for  you,  anyway  — 
my  marrying  him,  I  mean.  I  can't  see  what  call  you 
have  to  get  so  excited."  She  was  indeed  incapable  of 
comprehending  what  obscure  ambitions  had  been  sown 
and  flourished  in  Millie's  soul  by  the  promise  of  the 
McQuair  alliance,  and  what  a  disappointment  it  was 
to  find  that  growth  blighted ;  social  climbing  with  its 
incidental  exercises  such  as  making  stepping-stones  of 
other  people  would  forever  be  an  unknown  art  to 
Nettie.  Millie  knew  it  well;  but  the  other's  honest 
wonder  aroused  her  caution,  and  recalled  her  to  her- 
self. 

"  Why,  of  course  it  isn't  anything  to  me,  Net.     It's 


THE  NOON-MARK  227 

you  I'm  worried  about/'  she  said  in  a  different  voice, 
an  affectionate  and  distressed  and  pleading  voice.  u  2 
hate  to  see  you  two  ruining  your  lives  just  because  of 
ji  whim  or  a  little  scrap  that  doesn't  mean  anything. 
I  know,  I  just  know  you  could  fix  it  all  up  in  a  minute, 
if  you'd  just  let  yourself  go  once.  And  you  know  you 
aren't  going  to  get  another  fellow  like  Ranny  McQuair 
right  off,"  she  advised,  sincerely  enough,  with  a 
shrewdness  so  characteristic  that  Nettie  laughed  in 
spite  of  herself.  It  was  good  to  see  Millie  familiar 
and  natural  again ;  the  pose  of  affectionate  solicitude 
was  disquieting  somehow,  it  even  repelled  Nettie  a 
little.  She  was  attached  to  the  other  girl,  and  only 
required  that  she  should  always  be  the  same  lovely, 
irresponsible  and  unmanageable  creature;  if  she  was 
also  vain  and  self-indulgent  and  not  too  clean-minded, 
Nettie  did  not  care.     Millie  was  Millie. 

"  That's  all  right,  Millie,  don't  you  worry  about 
that.  There  are  others !  "  she  said  with  vast  signifi- 
cance; it  was  intentional  and  premeditated  roguery 
for  which  she  was  rewarded  by  the  other's  instant  and 
to  Nettie  most  comical  alertness. 

"  Oh  Nettie!  "  she  breathed.  "  So  that  was  why  — ? 
Who  is  it?  Mr.  Marklein?  Once  or  twice  I  thought 
he  —  is  it  Mr.  Marklein?"  As  a  sinking  swimmer 
might  clutch  at  a  life-belt,  so  —  in  a  fine  figure  of 
speech  —  did  Millie  clutch  at  the  idea  of  Mr.  Marklein. 
Match  for  match,  Marklein  or  McQuair,  there  was  not 
a  pin  to  choose ;  the  social  horizon  opened  once  more. 

"Mr.  Marklein?" 

"  The  young  one  I  mean,  of  course,"  said  Millie 
impatiently.  "  Mrs.  Marklein  probably  never  will 
die ;  she's  one  of  those  sickly  people  that  hang  on  till 
the  last  horn  toots.     Is  it  him?  " 


228  THE  NOON-MARK 

"  No,"  said  Nettie  shortly,  her  face  clouding.  All 
the  salt  went  out  of  her  joke,  somehow ;  that  was  like 
Millie,  she  said  to  herself  unreasonably,  always  think- 
ing things. 

The  truth  was  that  Emil  junior,  who  was  well 
known  to  have  a  taste  for  good  looks  in  the  opposite 
sex  as  exhibited  by  candy-counter  young  ladies,  wait- 
resses, hat-check  dispensers  and  others  of  like  unpre- 
tending occupations  including,  it  was  rumored,  the 
artists  of  the  chorus  and  the  vaudeville  stage  —  Emil 
had  more  than  once  cast  a  favorable  eye  in  Nettie's 
direction.  This  was  not  during  Randon's  time  when 
he  observed  a  discreet  distance  —  he  had  no  desire  to 
enter  into  that  particular  sort  of  competition,  it  would 
appear  —  but  before,  and  most  markedly  since.  Net- 
tie was  uncomfortably  aware  of  the  young  man's 
gaze,  his  determined  and  persevering  notice.  The 
word  notice  was  fraught  with  profound  meaning  in 
Nettie's  circle  —  in  other  circles  too,  perchance;  how 
should  I  know?  To  notice  or  be  noticed  conveyed  no 
light  intelligence  on  Rochester  Avenue.  And  here 
was  the  younger  Marklein  stopping  at  Nettie's  desk 
every  time  he  went  in  or  out  of  the  office,  hanging 
around  until  she  emerged  at  the  closing  hour,  hinting 
at  luncheons  and  automobile  excursions,  or  pressing 
invitations  on  her  outright,  noticing  her,  in  short  by 
every  device  known  to  man,  in  the  face  of  the  most 
emphatic  discouragement. 

For  Nettie  did  not  like  him.  He  was  fine-looking, 
he  had  plenty  of  money  and  spent  it  freely,  he  was 
probably  no  worse  than  the  next  man,  he  might  be 
in  earnest  or  with  a  judicious  amount  of  holding-back 
and  tantalizing  he  might  be  made  to  be  in  earnest ;  but 
Nettie  would  have  none  of  him.     That  quality  of  hers 


THE  NOON-MARK  229 

which  Marklein  senior  would  have  described  as  a  level 
head  ruled  her  even  in  her  rare  yielding  moods.  At 
first  she  regarded  his  behavior  with  a  tolerance  per- 
haps inborn,  perhaps  the  result  of  long  familiarity 
with  the  masculine  point  of  view;  with  such  indulg- 
ence not  unmingled  with  amusement  and  some  con- 
tempt does  one  man  behold  another's  essays  in  Emil's 
field.  If  he  wanted  to  make  a  fool  of  himself,  in 
Heaven's  name,  let  him !  It  was  only  when  he  became 
insistent,  stubbornly  and  as  it  seemed  to  her  stupidly 
refusing  to  take  her  denials,  that  the  girl  began  to  be 
irritated,  even  covertly  uneasy,  though  she  would  not 
have  admitted  it.  She  afraid  of  Mr.  Emil  Marklein? 
Forget  it !  She  had  never  been  afraid  of  a  man  in  her 
life,  and  she  certainly  wasn't  going  to  begin  with  him. 
She  knew  how  to  take  care  of  herself ;  and  if  he  didn't 
watch  his  step,  she'd  show  him. 

"  No,  I  don't  care  for  chocolate-creams.  I  don't 
care  for  any  kind  of  candy,"  she  would  respond  coolly, 
taking  care  to  be  audible  all  over  the  outer  office,  to 
Emil's  low-voiced  suggestion;  and  the  young  man 
would  retreat,  under  a  fire  of  subdued  giggles  from  the 
other  girls  and  the  casual  male  clerk  or  bank-mess- 
enger who  was  pretty  certain  to  be  within  hearing,  red 
and  furious  yet  still  obtusely  bent  on  conquest.  He 
used  to  wonder  naively  how  in  —  in  never  mind  what ! 
—  Rand  McQuair  whom  nobody  Avould  pick  out  for  an 
enterprising  fellow  along  these  lines  had  ever  man- 
aged to  get  next  to  this  girl,  condemn  her !  —  only 
that  was  not  the  verb  which  Mr.  Marklein  employed. 
He  would  hardly  have  been  pleased  to  know  the  com- 
parisons which  Nettie  sometimes  made  between  their 
methods  of  approach. 

Emil  was  not  the  only  pretender.     For  now,  sud- 


230  THE  NOON-MARK 

denly,  that  old-time  acquaintance  and  would-be  suitor 
of  Nettie's,  Jim  Marvin,  turned  up  again,  floridly 
dressed,  swashbuckling  as  ever,  after  one  of  those 
absences  which  invariably  follow  upon  the  failure  —  or 
sometimes  the  success  —  of  some  coup  with  gentlemen 
of  his  caliber.  This  same  power  of  instantaneous  and 
complete  disappearance  is  one  of  their  most  enviable 
attributes.  What  becomes  of  them  in  the  interludes? 
They  are  not  in  any  sort  of  durance ;  these  magnificent 
adventurers  manage  to  keep  on  the  hither  side  of  the 
law  as  surely  as  the  petty  ones.  But  what  becomes  of 
them?  Nobody  knows.  They  depart,  they  vanish, 
they  are  temporarily  obliterated;  anon  they  return 
and  recommence  their  splendid  courses  —  and  still 
nobody  knows  Avhere  they  have  been  or  how  they  have 
fared  during  the  silence.  Jim  turned  up  looking  like 
d'Artagnan,  and  Rupert  of  Hentzau,  and  Captain 
Kidd  all  rolled  into  one;  Nettie  ran  across  him  on  a 
street-corner,  and  he  fell  into  step  by  her  side  jauntily, 
sure  of  his  welcome. 

"  Hear  you  and  our  pussy -footed  friend  have  decided 
to  call  it  off?  "  he  remarked  presently,  after  some  con- 
ventionalities, shooting  an  oblique  glance  at  her  under 
his  drooping  lids  and  thick,  wicked  black  brows. 

Nettie  did  not  pretend  to  misunderstand;  she 
adopted  his  own  tone,  defiantly.  "You  don't  mind 
asking  questions,  do  you?  " 

"Well,  when  I  want  to  know  anything  for  sure  I 
always  go  to  headquarters.  It's  so,  isn't  it?  You 
needn't  worry  about  breaking  the  news  to  me  gently ; 
I  can  stand  it,"  said  James  with  graceful  irony.  He 
gave  her  another  look  before  which,  against  her  will, 
the  girl's  own  eyes  wavered ;  there  had  been  moments 
before  this  when  Jim  daunted  her  inexplicably.     His 


THE  NOON-MARK  231 

challenge,  was  so  bold  and  unashamed.  "  Maybe  you'll 
remember  there's  somebody  else  on  earth  now,"  he 
said;  and  before  they  parted  announced  that  he  was 
coming  out  that  evening,  with  a  cocksure  finality  that 
made  no  pretense  of  considering  her  preference  in  the 
matter  of  visitors. 

He  came;  he  came  again;  he  took  Nettie  out,  and 
met  her  elsewhere.  Ere  long  he  put  on  something 
of  the  victorious,  proprietary  air  which  might  have 
been  expected  of  Randon,  but  which  Randon,  alas, 
had  never  known  how  or  been  able  to  assume. 
Strange  to  say,  Nettie  did  not  resent  it.  Although 
she  and  the  family  and  the  whole  neighborhood  knew 
nothing  good  about  Jim  Marvin,  although  Millie  — 
whom  he  met  with  perfect  assurance  and  gayety  — 
could  justly  have  held  a  grudge  against  him,  although 
Elmer  had  no  more  reason  to  trust  or  like  him  than 
before,  although  his  habits  and  the  way  he  made  his 
living  were  alike  under  suspicion  —  notwithstanding 
these  and  a  dozen  other  valid  objections  to  him,  every- 
body not  only  suffered  Jim,  but  looked  upon  his  court- 
ship with  good-will  —  with  much  more  good-will  than 
they  had  ever  accorded  to  that  youth  of  irreproachable 
family  and  morals,  Randon  McQuair ! 

And  why  not,  to  be  sure?  Jim  was  not  shy  of 
Rochester  Avenue,  its  society  and  its  homes.  If  he 
was  a  black  sheep,  he  still  belonged  to  their  own  fold, 
calling  the  men  and  many  of  the  girls  by  their  first 
names,  invading  the  ranks  of  matrons  at  the  Maple- 
hurst  Social  Club  dances,  and  forcibly  prevailing  on 
them  to  dance  with  him,  brazingly  joking  Mr.  Weaver 
about  the  undertaking  trade,  slapping  poor  Frank 
Stieffel  on  the  back  and  treating  him  to  a  stogie,  call- 
ing Miss  Julie  "  auntie,"  loud,  jolly,  arrogant,  ineffa- 


232  THE  NOON-MAEK 

bly  at  ease.  Nothing  more  natural  than  his  popu- 
larity and  the  other  young  man's  lack  of  it.  For 
verily  I  say,  most  of  us  would  rather  associate  with  a 
rag-picker  we  know  than  with  a  duke  who  doesn't 
know  us,  and  personal  merit  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 
By  this  time,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hands  were  established 
in  one  of  the  neighborhood  duplexes,  with  a  kitchen- 
ette, a  gas-range,  a  brass  bedstead,  a  bird's-eye  maple 
dressing-table  and  such  other  of  the  trappings  of  the 
newly  wed  as  Elmer's  budget  would  compass.  Millie 
was  not  exacting  in  the  matter  of  home  comforts,  and 
perhaps  had  other  and  what  she  deemed  better  uses 
for  the  money  Elmer  gave  her  than  to  spend  it  on 
house-furnishings.  Certain  phrases  about  simplicity 
and  culture,  the  trammels  of  convention  and  the 
higher  planes  of-  thought  which  had  survived  in  some 
corner  of  her  memory  through  years  of  disuse  like 
goods  left  in  storage,  from  childish  days  in  the  Cal- 
ifornia colony,  she  now  brought  out  and  aired,  finding 
them  remarkably  up-to-date,  spite  of  their  antiquity. 
The  truth  is  that  sort  of  material  never  does  go 
entirely  out  of  style,  and  with  an  extensive  assortment 
of  catchwords  one  may  pass  for  original  and  brilliant 
anywhere,  at  any  era;  nothing  endures  like  shoddy. 
Their  vocabulary,  let  it  be  said  at  once,  was  all  that 
Millie  adopted  or  inherited  from  the  society  of  b'hanas 
and  b'hanees ;  to  have  put  in  practice  their  somewhat 
liberal  theories  as  they  themselves  had  done  would 
have  seemed  to  Millie  at  this  stage  of  her  career  the 
height  of  destructive  folly.  Merely  as  an  economic 
measure  she  would  have  refused  to  share  a  husband 
with  some  other  lady,  and  as  to  sharing  property  — ! 
As  it  was  she  kept  most  of  Elmer's  salary ;  at  first  the 


THE  NOON-MARK  233 

young  fellow  was  well  enough  satisfied  that  she 
should.  If,  after  a  few  months,  the  fact  that  his  home 
markedly  lacked  the  comforts  and  attentions  he  had  a 
right  to  expect,  that  in  plain  English  he  was  not  get- 
ting what  he  paid  for  obtruded  itself  upon  him  and 
he  began  to  make  some  demur,  outsiders  knew  nothing 
of  it.  Even  the  family  knew  nothing;  they  them- 
selves were  not  used  to  a  well-kept  house.  Millie  did 
not  go  to  see  them  very  often;  but  then  she  seldom 
went  to  see  any  of  her  aforetime  associates  nowadays. 
She  had  become  a  member  of  the  All  Saints'  congre- 
gation —  which,  next  to  All  Souls'  was  reputed  to  be 
one  of  the  wealthiest  and  socially  most  exalted  in  the 
city  —  and  had  joined  a  number  of  the  charitable 
organizations  it  sponsored,  all  of  them,  in  fact,  where 
one  incurred  no  risk  of  heavy  assessments.  You 
might  see  her  at  bazaars  and  suppers,  very  active  at 
the  counters  and  waiting  on  the  tables,  always  charm- 
ingly dressed,  flushed  and  pretty,  sweetly  attentive  to 
the  elderly  people,  especially  the  elderly  gentlemen. 
That  amiable  old  worldling,  Mrs.  Hector  McQuair 
encountering  her  on  some  of  these  occasions,  observed 
her  activities  in  the  beginning  with  surprise,  which 
later  gave  way  to  comprehending  and  humanely 
cynical  amusement. 

"  The  young  woman  has  the  right  impulses,"  she 
would  say,  not  meaning,  however,  that  Millie's 
impulses  were  towards  a  life  of  holiness  and  good 
works.  "  She  has  the  right  impulses,''  says  old  Vir- 
ginia, with  a  kind  of  benevolent  malice ;  "  but  she 
needs  advice.  The  church-and-charities  route  is  not 
what  it  was  a  few  years,  say  a  generation,  ago.  It 
has    been    too    thoroughly    exploited.     Nowadays,    I 


234  THE  NOON-MABK 

understand,  one  must  get  oneself  talked  about  —  in 
the  right  way  by  the  right  people,  of  course.  And  it 
takes  money;  but  it  has  always  taken  money.  Yes, 
she  has  talent,  but  she  needs  advice." 


XVI 

ACCOKDING  to  sundry  students  of  life  — 
whose  names,  though  of  merited  renown, 
somehow  elude  the  memory  —  nothing  is 
more  strongly  characteristic  of  sex  than  the  differing 
fashion  in  which  men  and  women  meet  and  treat  eco- 
nomic problems.  Let  a  woman,  a  good  conscientious 
woman  discover  that  she  is  over-spending  —  they  say 
—  and  she  at  once  begins  to  retrench  in  a  thousand 
directions,  sensible  or  foolish,  thrifty  or  penny-wise, 
but  almost  always  painful ;  wThereas  a  man,  convicted 
of  extravagance,  never  dreams  of  scrimping,  he  merely 
decides  that  he  must  make  more  money  to  keep  pace 
with  his  enlarging  tastes.  It  is  a  handsome  theory 
and  tempts  to  investigation;  but,  in  the  instance  at 
hand,  that  of  Nettie  Stieffel,  it  seems  to  be  disproved. 
For  Nettie,  finding  like  the  rest  of  the  world  about  this 
time  that  the  family  expenses  wTere  steadily  exceeding 
the  family  income  with  the  mounting  prices  of  shoes 
and  groceries  and  coal  and  what-not  —  Nettie,  I  say, 
did  not  immediately  plunge  into  scared  economies  on 
her  own  part  or  attempt  to  force  economy  on  the 
household.  She  was  too  experienced  for  the  latter 
measure  in  any  event;  waste  and  mismanagement  at 
home  were  nothing  new  to  Nettie,  and  she  had  long 
since  recognized  the  futility  of  trying  to  regulate  that 
unkempt  domain.  "  A  person  can't  attend  to  two  jobs 
at  once,"  was  her  verdict ;  she  must  go  on  contributing 
her  share,  pouring  water  into  sand,  and  she  always 
contrived  to  do  it  without  too  much  self-sacrifice. 

235 


236  THE  NOON-MAKK 

She  was  no  drudge;  she  was  a  hard-headed,  capable 
young  woman,  daily  growing  harder-headed,  and  pos- 
sessed of  but  one  desire,  to  become  more  capable.  So 
that  when  the  increasing  cost  of  living  began  to  be  op- 
pressively evident  and  to  be  talked  about  on  every 
side,  she  was  affected  in  what  the  philosophers  just 
quoted  would  have  us  believe  a  most  unwomanly  man- 
ner. No  inordinate  pinching  and  scraping  for  Net- 
tie! Instead  she  set  about  expanding  her  resources, 
for  all  the  world  like  a  man.  She  hunted  up  stray 
jobs  of  typewriting,  addressing,  cataloguing,  index- 
ing, sets  of  books  to  open,  muddled  accounts  to 
straighten ;  all  her  holidays  and  spare  hours  went  in 
work,  she  got  up  early  and  kept  at  it  late,  a  marvel  of 
efficiency  and  reliability,  and  to  all  appearances  tire- 
less as  a  steel  spring. 

"  I  like  to  make  the  money  —  and  I  like  to  work 
anyhow,"  she  would  reply  briefly  to  all  remonstrances 
that  she  would  wear  herself  out,  that  she  would  ruin 
her  eyesight,  that  she  was  getting  thin,  that  she  had 
a  gray  hair  —  at  twenty-seven !  —  and  so  on.  "  Peo- 
ple can't  keep  their  looks  forever,  and  I'd  a  whole  lot 
rather  lose  mine  getting  thin  than  getting  fat.  I  keep 
myself  nice,  and  I  always  mean  to.  What  gets  me  is 
that  if  I  was  a  man,  nobody'd  be  worrying  about  me 
working.  You'd  all  be  going  around,  saying :  '  Oh 
my,  isn't  he  a  steady  young  fellow!  Tell  you  that 
boy's  going  to  amount  to  something ! '  Just  because 
I'm  a  girl  — !  "  Nettie  burst  out  laughing  at  this 
quaint  inconsistency.  Years  of  business-life  had  fin- 
ally taught  her  the  value  of  good-humor  and  patience ; 
and  besides  who  will  say  that  she  was  not  really 
happy  in  her  relentless  activities?  All  together,  they 
brought  in  enough  to  keep  her  not  only  square  with 


THE  NOON-MARK  237 

expenditures,  but  even  infinitesimally  ahead  of  them, 
a  result  that  filled  her  with  a  kind  of  moderate  and 
prudent  satisfaction.  She  was  too  ambitious  to  be 
complacent. 

Her  favorite  dream  —  if  any  process  of  Nettie's 
matter-of-fact  mind  could  be  called  dreaming  —  was 
that  of  one  day  establishing  a  business-school  —  a  col- 
lege —  Stieffel's  Female  College  —  no,  Stieffel's  Com- 
mercial College  for  Women.  She  would  not  take 
men;  she  did  not  believe  in  the  co-educational  plan, 
Nettie  said  firmly ;  girls  had  to  be  taught  in  a  different 
way  from  men,  to  say  nothing  of  the  nuisance  both 
girls  and  men  invariably  made  of  themselves  whenever 
you  tried  to  mix  them.  There  would  be  classes  in 
stenography,  book-keeping,  penmanship,  every  branch 
of  office-work  so  conducted  as  to  be  of  the  utmost  prac- 
tical benefit  to  the  student;  she  would  make  it  her 
specialty  to  turn  out  experienced  clerical  help  —  no 
cubs  and  green  hands  would  come  from  her  place. 
If  the  girls  did  not  show  talent,  or  at  any  rate  the  will 
to  learn,  they  would  be  dropped,  that  was  all  there 
was  to  it !  She  wouldn't  fool  with  them.  She  really 
couldn't;  it  would  undermine  her  reputation.  The 
course  would  be  two  years;  she  calculated  that  it 
would  take  an  ordinarily  bright  girl  two  years,  and 
besides  that  was  one  way  to  get  a  good  line  on  them. 
If  a  girl  had  the  sand  to  stick  it  out  for  two  years, 
she  was  all  right,  and  Nettie  would  get  her  a  job. 
Otherwise,  no!  She  wouldn't  do  a  thing  for  them, 
and  she  wouldn't  give  them  a  recommendation. 
There  would  also  be  a  post-graduate  or  normal  course 
of  one  year,  featuring  instruction  in  the  business 
vocabulary  of  foreign  languages  and  foreign  business 
usage ;  it  would  be  for  women  who  had  already  been 


238  THE  NOON-MARK 

in  business  some  years  and  had  learned  all  the  routine 
stuff  from  the  ground  up,  as  you  might  say  —  like 
herself,  for  instance.  Almost  all  the  regular  colleges 
had  some  department  on  that  order.  She  would  prob- 
ably teach  personally  some  of  the  more  advanced 
classes,  if  managing  the  whole  thing  did  not  take  her 
whole  time  —  of  course  she  would  hire  competent  in- 
structors, but  she  would  be  the  boss,  you  bet  — 

"  Oh  my,  Nettie  child,  it  kinda  scares  me  to  hear 
you  talk  that  way,"  her  Aunt  Julia  would  break  in  at 
this  point.  Julia  was  the  sole  person  to  whom  Nettie 
confided  her  Alnaschar  projects,  and  the  poor  old 
maid  was  reminded  of  her  own  disastrous  adventure 
along  approximately  the  same  road.  "  I  thought  I 
could  do  it,  too  —  run  a  place,  I  mean.  It's  different 
from  what  you  think.  Just  because  you  can  do  a 
thing  first-rate  yourself  ain't  any  reason  you  can  make 
somebody  else  do  it.  Honestly,  there's  times  when 
you  get  to  thinking  there  ain't  anybody  in  the  world 
that's  got  any  sense,  or  '11  tell  the  truth.  And  your 
money  keeps  going— !  It's  awful !  "  Julia  shook  her 
head  with  tragic  eyes,  biting  off  a  thread  between  her 
worn  old  yellow  teeth  amongst  which  a  file  of  false 
ones  in  front  gleamed  eerily  white  and  monumental. 
"  Don't  you  do  it,  Nettie !  "  she  implored.  "  You  just 
stay  satisfied  with  what  you  got." 

"  Why,  I  am.  I'm  not  thinking  about  doing  it  now, 
you  know.  I'm  not  fixed  to  —  not  until  Roy  gets  old 
enough  to  work,  anyhow.  I'd  have  to  borrow  the 
money  to  get  started,  and  I  don't  want  to  do  that  right 
now,"  said  Nettie  — and  that  airy  reference  to  bor- 
rowing plunged  her  aunt  into  another  panic.  Bor- 
row !  She  saw  them  all  in  the  alms'  house,  with  pot- 
ter's field  on  the  horizon  —  not  so  unfamiliar  a  per- 


THE  NOON-MARK  239 

spective,  alas !  More  than  once  in  Julia's  hard-work- 
ing life  had  she  contemplated  it.  She  began  to  con- 
sider Roy  a  safe-guard,  and  the  family  were  astonished 
at  the  warmth  with  which  she  now  argued  against 
his  leaving  high-school  after  the  first  year,  and  getting 
something  to  do.  As  accustomed  as  they  were  to 
Julia's  help,  it  seemed  unnatural  that  she  should  not 
welcome  a  lightening  of  the  common  burden.  Her 
only  backer  in  the  family  councils  was  Millie's  hus- 
band. Elmer  said  solemnly  that  Roy  ought  to  finish 
his  education. 

Elmer  also  was  the  only  one  to  raise  any  objection 
to  Nettie's  varied  industries.  It  was  all  right,  he 
would  even  admit  that  it  was  necessary  for  her  to  get 
outside  work,  but  —  here  Elmer  would  purse  his  lips 
and  frown  knowingly,  and  remark  with  significance 
that  he  had  seen  the  world.  Certain  things  didn't 
look  well ;  might  be  all  right,  but  still  they  didn't  look 
well;  made  people  talk.  Nettie  should  not  stay  over 
time,  and  come  home  late.  He  mentioned  the  owl-car 
in  guarded  tones;  most  people  to  whom  one  offered 
extra  work  as  an  explanation  for  the  owl-car  would 
simply  wink  the  other  eye.  They  would  say  that  no 
girl  needed  extra  work  that  bad.  He  had  seen  the 
ivorld  — 

"  Well,  my  goodness  mercy,  I've  seen  it  too,  if  it 
comes  to  that,"  said  Nettie  sharply.  "  I  began  every 
bit  as  young  as  you  did.  I'm  not  afraid  of  anything 
happening  to  me,  nor  of  what  people  say,  either. 
That  just  happened  one  night,  and  there  wasn't  any- 
body on  the  old  owl-car  except  two  darkies  with  white- 
wash buckets,  both  of  'em  asleep.  And  Jim  was  along 
anyhow." 

She   spoke  with   some   defiance,   rather  expecting 


240  THE  NOON-MARK 

more  criticism ;  but,  after  an  instant,  Elmer  only  re- 
marked with  a  species  of  reluctant  approval  that  Jim 
was  hard-boiled  enough  in  all  conscience,  he  wouldn't 
let  anything  happen  to  her,  anyhow.  His  attitude 
towards  Jim  and  Jim's  attentions  typified  that  of 
their  whole  community,  even  in  some  measure  Nettie's 
own  attitude.  Everybody  knew  all  about  Mr.  James 
Marvin  —  which  is  to  say  that  nobody  actually  knew 
anything  about  him.  They  accepted  him,  however, 
where  they  would  have  unceremoniously  rejected  an 
alien  scoundrel;  Jim  was  their  own.  Not  a  man  on 
Rochester  Avenue  would  have  believed  him  for  a  sec- 
ond or  trusted  him  with  a  dollar  —  upon  any  legit- 
imate, open  and  above-board  business,  that  is.  But 
we  are  all,  even  the  best  of  us,  even  the  most  upright 
of  Rochester  Avenue  husbands  and  fathers,  poor  frail 
creatures  and  who  knows  of  what  guilty  little  secrets 
Jim  was  the  custodian,  or  how  many  trivial  crimes  he 
had  farthered?  I  think  honest  men  would  have  a 
dull  and  difficult  time  getting  along  without  the  dis- 
honest ones.  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  Jim  was  a 
decent  sort  of  Mephistopheles,  never  betraying  a  con- 
fidence or  exacting  tribute  for  his  silence.  Perhaps 
with  a  truly  Mephistophelian  humor  he  regarded  the 
missteps  of  the  godly  as  a  particularly  spicy  joke. 
Occasionally  he  would  even  steer  some  sinner  back 
to  the  ways  of  righteousness  out  of  either  a  wary  self- 
interest  or  sheer  irresponsible  good-nature.  As 
when,  for  example,  after  taking  Mr.  Weaver's  surrep- 
titious ten  dollars  and  operating  with  it  across  the 
river  in  those  shady  retreats  to  which  he  had  the 
entry,  he  returned  it  multiplied  to  seventy-five  but 
steadfastly  refused  to  repeat  the  experiment  in  spite 
of  the  other's  excited  pleadings. 


THE  NOON-MARK  241 

"  Nix !  Nump !  Not  again !  "  says  Jim,  waving  a 
repelling  hand.  "  Once  is  a  plenty  for  you,  Weavil. 
You're  the  kind  that  a  little  luck  is  the  worst  thing  in 
the  world  for.  You  don't  know  when  to  stop,"  says 
Jim,  with  the  air  of  being  himself  a  pattern  of  virtue 
and  self-restraint !  "  Just  supposing  somebody  got 
on?  It  wouldn't  make  any  difference  with  me,  but  a 
man  like  you  —  good-night !  Nobody  wants  a  sport- 
ing undertaker.  Nope,  I  tell  you.  Take  my  advice 
and  lay  off  the  ponies,  Weavy.  Or  get  somebody  else 
to  do  your  plunging  for  you.  I'm  through."  It  was 
a  sound  argument ;  Jim  had  nothing  to  lose  in  the  way 
of  reputation,  whereas  the  head  of  a  funeral-parlor 
—  the  thought  of  public  exposure  chilled  Mr.  Wea- 
ver's blood ;  it  may  be  that  for  one  moment  he  envied 
the  other's  devil-may-care  independence.  But,  know- 
ing no  one  save  Jim  to  whom  he  dared  apply,  he  per- 
force gave  up  the  wild  game.  Very  likely  he  did  not 
relish  Jim's  ribald  nicknames ;  very  likely  he  was  not 
at  all  obliged  for  his  rascally  good  offices  or  good  ad- 
vice, for  what  man  on  earth  was  ever  grateful  to  an- 
other for  helping  him  to  make  a  fool  of  himself  or 
keeping  him  from  it?  But,  setting  aside  a  certain 
likeableness  about  Mr.  Marvin,  it  was  impossible  in 
the  circumstances  not  to  countenance  him. 

As  for  the  feminine  half  of  society,  the  mere  fact 
that  Jim's  morals  were  insecure  sufficed  for  them; 
they  had  the  good  woman's  ineradicable  fondness  for 
a  reprobate.  Nettie  Stieffel,  who  had  a  much  clearer 
conception  of  his  character  than  any  of  them,  never- 
theless shared  their  weakness.  There  was  this  differ- 
ence between  her  and  the  rest,  however;  Nettie  had 
no  delusions  about  reforming  him,  nor  did  she  see 
herself  as  the  angelic  being  delegated  by  Heaven  to 


242  THE  NOON-MARK 

perform  that  purifying  and  ennobling  task.  Nettie 
had  her  opinion,  by  no  means  a  flattering  one,  of  those 
sweet  and  simple  ideas  and  of  the  women  who  held 
them.  She  frankly  and  fearlessly  liked  Jim,  making 
no  excuses,  knowing  all  the  while  that  she  had  no 
respect  for  him;  in  her  rare  moods  of  introspection, 
the  feeling  puzzled  and  amused  her.  He  was  cer- 
tainly no  better  than  young  Marklein,  he  might  be  in 
a  strict  interpretation  of  the  laws  of  conduct,  a  good 
deal  worse ;  yet  she  could  not  endure  Marklein's  com- 
pany for  half  an  hour  and  shunned  him  openly  with- 
out even  the  affectation  of  civility.  Whereas  she  and 
Jim  got  on  famously  together,  after  a  Beatrice-and- 
Benedict  fashion,  to  be  sure;  they  were  great  pals, 
according  to  Mr.  Marvin. 

That  they  were  not  something  more  was  not  the 
young  man's  fault.  He  used  all  the  ordinary  means 
of  persuasion,  making  her  presents,  taking  her  out 
and  entertaining  her  brilliantly.  He  was  free  wTith 
his  money,  when  he  had  any ;  "  Easy  come,  easy  go ! " 
Nettie  used  to  think.  Still  remotely  wondering  at 
herself,  she  would  suffer  his  love-making  up  to  a  cer- 
tain point,  then  cut  him  off  short,  as  often  as  not  with 
ruthless  laughter,  that  most  effectual  of  weapons. 
When  she  considered  marrying  him  —  and  she  did 
consider  it  now  and  then  —  she  found  herself  shrink- 
ing from  the  notion  of  knowing  him  that  well.  Going 
around  with  a  man  who  got  his  money  in  devious 
ways  and  letting  him  spend  it  on  her  was  one  thing; 
being  married  to  him  and  living  on  that  same  ques- 
tionable money  was  another.  No,  she  did  not  care  to 
know  him  too  well ;  and  besides  she  quite  dispassion- 
ately envisaged  the  possibility  of  his  already  having 


THE  NOON-MARK  243 

a  wife,  official  or  unofficial,  somewhere.     In  Nettie's 
own  phrase,  she  "  wouldn't  put  it  past  him !  " 

Messrs.  Marklein  (jr.)  and  Marvin  were  acquainted, 
both  of  them  belonging  to  that  class  vaguely  described 
as  men  about  town,  though  it  may  be  that  Jim's 
stratum  was  a  degree  lower  than  the  other  young 
man's.  Emil's  fortunes  were  on  a  sound  basis;  he 
might  be  a  prodigal  and  on  a  fair  way  to  eating  husks 
with  the  swine,  but  for  the  present  at  least  he  was  not 
involved  in  debts  and  disreputable  expedients.  This 
security  gave  him  the  advantage  over  Jim,  if  he  had 
known  how  to  use  it;  but  behold  how  unevenly  are 
the  gifts  distributed!  Emil  with  his  wardrobe  and 
his  racing-car  and  his  clubs  and  his  bank-account  and 
everything  else  that  was  his  all  bought  and  paid  for 
with  the  older  Emil's  honest  dollars  was  nothing  but 
a  coarse,  over-dressed,  thick-skulled,  potential  black- 
leg ;  and  Jim,  an  actual  one,  living  by  his  wits,  with 
his  hand  in  every  man's  pocket,  body  and  soul  on  the 
auction-block  for  the  highest  bidder,  was  not  without 
attractive  and  companionable  qualities,  and  could 
even  pass  for  a  gentleman  under  not  too  close  a 
scrutiny.  As  to  looks,  he  so  far  eclipsed  the  other 
that  a  comparison  would  move  the  coldest  heart  to 
pity  for  Emil.  What  chance  had  that  stout,  red- 
faced  youth  with  the  enlarging  bald  spot  alongside 
the  lean,  dark,  spirited  Claude  Duval  of  a  Jim? 
What  chance  with  any  young  woman,  that  is?  None, 
none  in  the  world.  Many  a  girl  besides  Nettie  would 
have  made  the  same  choice. 

"  Some  day  I'm  going  to  set  him  down  good  and 
hard  —  the  fresh  dub !  "  she  announced,  coming  home 
in  a  flaming  temper  after  some  more  than  usually  try- 


244  THE  NOON-MARK 

ing  experience  with  Marklein  junior.  "'  There  I  am 
in  the  office  where  I  can't  get  away  from  him,  and  I 
can't  say  anything  or  go  to  anybody !  He  knows  that 
as  well  as  I  do,  and  he  thinks  he's  perfectly  safe  to  be 
as  smart  as  he  wants  to.  He'd  better  watch  out. 
There's  some  things  I  won't  stand  for." 

"Why,  what'd  he  say  this  time?"  Millie  inquired 
with  a  natural  curiosity. 

"  Never  you  mind  what  he  said.  There're  some 
things  I  won't  stand  for,  that's  all !  " 

"  Don't  forget  your  job,"  Millie  advised  her  calmly. 

"  Oh,  I'm  thinking  about  my  job  all  right.  If  it 
wasn't  for  that  — !  Any  way,  there's  more  than  one 
job  in  the  world." 

"  I  don't  believe  he  said  anything  at  all  —  to  amount 
to  anything,"  said  Millie,  eyeing  her.  "  You're  just 
mad  because  you  don't  like  him.  It  makes  a  lot  of 
difference  who  the  man  is  that  says  the  things  Any- 
how, getting  mad  isn't  the  way  to  get  even  with  him." 

"It's  not  your  way,  I  know,"  said  Nettie  with 
emphasis. 

They  exchanged  a  long,  steady  look  of  thorough  un- 
derstanding on  both  sides.  "  My  way's  always 
worked  pretty  well,"  Millie  said.  Nowadays,  in  these 
set-tos  with  Nettie,  she  enjoyed  the  incontestable 
superiorly  of  the  married  woman;  even  Nettie  must 
allow  that  married  women  knew  more  than  single 
ones,  and  that  knowledge  weighted  Millie's  arguments 
which  otherwise  were  the  same  she  had  always  used. 
"  I  don't  see  why  a  person  shouldn't  — "  she  said  im- 
patiently, but  with  a  certain  care  about  her  voice  and 
utterance.  "Men  are  the  biggest  fools  ever.  You 
can  get  anything  out  of  'em,  and  make  'em  do  any- 
thing you  choose,  without  —  you  know  —  without  do- 


THE  NOON-MARK  245 

ing  anything  yourself  —  you  know  what  I  mean.  If 
he's  so  crazy  about  you,  why,  for  goodness'  sake,  why 
not  let  him  be  crazy?  You  can  stop  whenever  you 
want  to.  You  don't  have  to  do  a  thing,  not  one  single 
thing.  And  it  would  serve  him  right,  wouldn't  it? 
I  don't  see  why  you  shouldn't.     /  would  in  a  minute." 

"  Millie  Aymar!  Your  husband  would  love  to  hear 
how  you  talk,  wouldn't  he !  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  mean  now  I'm  married,  of  course," 
said  Millie  hastily  —  though  it  is  much  to  be  ques- 
tioned whether  she  had  had  any  such  restriction  as 
was  implied  in  mind.  "  I  mean  if  I  was  a  girl  again. 
I  never  could  see  any  harm  in  letting  a  man  stick 
around  and  spend  his  money  if  he  was  boob  enough  to. 
What  difference  does  it  make  to  you  what  he  thinks? 
They  aren't  any  of  'em  any  too  good.  I  don't  believe 
in  any  girl  doing  wrong  —  you  know  —  of  course  that 
would  be  awful,"  said  Millie  primly.  A  certain  hard- 
ness appeared  around  the  lovely  full  curves  of  her 
lips,  expressing  not  so  much  inflexible  virtue  as  in- 
flexible caution.  "But  there  isn't  any  reason  why 
she  shouldn't  make  the  most  of  herself  and  take  what- 
ever she  can  get  as  she  goes  along.  It's  hard  enough 
for  girls  anyhow." 

"  Well,  I  guess  I  don't  know  how.  Anyway,  what  s 
the  use  our  talking?  We  never  did  think  alike  about 
that/'  Nettie  said  uneasily.  She  could  not  take  any 
exceptions  to  Millie's  talk ;  what  sensible  person  cares 
to  assume  the  holier-than-thou  attitude?  Yet  she 
could  not  escape  a  disturbing  consciousness  of  some- 
thing cheap,  ignoble  and  what  was  more,  something 
essentially  false  about  it.  Millie  was  just  talking; 
people  always  said  a  lot  of  things  they  didn't  really 
mean,  she  would  tell  herself  in  extenuation. 


246  THE  NOON-MARK 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hands  were  now  boarding,  in  one 
room  at  Hubbard's  Family  Hotel,  whose  patrons  were 
mostly  couples  like  themselves,  or  traveling-men  pre- 
sumably bachelors,  or  middle-aged  women  teachers  in 
the  public-schools,  or  social  workers,  or  students  at 
the  Conservatory  —  a  floating  population.  House- 
keeping, even  on  the  lightest  of  "  light  "  scales  speed- 
ily palled  on  Millie;  it  was  too  lonesome,  too  confin- 
ing, too  laborious.  Accordingly  the  small  establish- 
ment was  broken  up,  the  ice-chest  went  to  auction,  the 
china-cabinet  to  storage;  Hubbard's  and  a  folding- 
bed  received  the  pair  and  Millie  entered  upon  a  life 
of  leisure.  It  was,  in  fact,  just  that  and  nothing 
more;  excepting  the  surcease  from  household  cares, 
Hubbard's  offered  no  advantages.  Millie  now  dis- 
covered that  living  in  a  boarding-house  and  having 
nothing  to  do  in  no  sense  assist  one's  social  progress 
—  rather  retard  it;  but  she  was  beginning  to  think 
that  social  progress  was  an  unbearably  slow  business 
under  any  circumstances.  What  is  Society?  A  bat- 
tlemented  citadel,  a  dragon  in  a  cave,  a  circle  of  en- 
chantment? 

Little  Millie  had  assaulted  it  repeatedly;  intangi- 
ble and  indefinable  behind  its  viewless  defenses, 
it  remained  untaken.  To  no  avail  her  youth,  her 
prettiness,  her  study  of  manners,  her  charitable  en- 
deavor, her  attendance  at  church,  her  assiduous  pur- 
suit of  culture;  Society  continued  unmoved,  even  un- 
aware of  her.  The  specific  trouble,  Millie  decided, 
was  want  of  money ;  without  money  she  would  never 
get  anywhere  —  and  when  would  Elmer  make  enough, 
if  ever?  It  took  millions  these  days.  Be  a  million- 
aire, make  a  sensation;  make  a  sensation,  get  into 
Society.     There  you  have  it  in  a  nutshell!     Unless 


THE  NOON-MARK  247 

7011  were  lucky  enough  to  have  been  born  in  Society, 
there  was  no  other  entrance. 

Millie  deserves  some  credit  for  the  power  and  orig- 
inality of  thought  evinced  by  this  deduction ;  but  now, 
de  fil  en  aiguille,  she  advanced  to  another  which  dis- 
plays her  abilities,  as  it  were  in  full  flower,  viz:  if 
money  lacks,  a  sensation  may  yet  be  achieved  by  other 
means,  and  the  sensation's  the  thing !  Music,  poetry, 
the  stage,  the  studio  offer  opportunities  for  attracting 
notice  which  compare  very  favorably  with  those  af- 
forded by  wealth.  To  be  sure,  it  appeared  on  review 
that  all  these  notoriety-winning  trades  required  more 
or  less  preparation,  preparation  which  was  reported 
to  be  slow  and  irksome;  there  were  schools  and  in- 
structors and  long,  long  courses  of  study;  even  writ- 
ing, a  profession  for  which,  as  everybody  knows,  no 
training  whatever  is  needed,  looked  at  close  quarters, 
uninvitingly  like  work.  She  hovered  a  while  over  elo- 
cution, but  ultimately  condemned  it,  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  not  stylish;  nobody  was  an  elocutionist 
nowadays.  That  seemed  to  close  the  list,  yet  Millie 
had  an  obscure  and  fumbling  conviction  that  there 
was  something  else ;  new  arts  were  coming  up  every 
day;  there  must  be  something  else.  By  diligent  at- 
tention to  what  she  considered  the  smart  magazines 
she  gathered  that  these  new  arts  were  created  in  the 
simplest  possible  manner,  merely  by  reversing  all  the 
rules  of  the  old  ones.  The  new  poets  wrote  prose; 
the  new  scenic  artists  employed  no  scenery  at  all ;  the 
new  dancers  stood  still  in  various  postures;  the  new 
music  earnestly  avoided  being  musical ;  the  new  paint- 
ers and  sculptors  —  but  Millie  could  not  make  head 
or  tail  out  of  what  they  did.  Everybody  was  a  Deca- 
dent, L  Reactionary,  a  Post-this,  a  Future-that.     The 


248  THE  NOON-MARK 

vocabulary  of  the  new  aestheticism  was  easy  to  ac- 
quire for  a  person  of  Millie's  endowment,  but  upon 
whom  or  with  whom  was  she  to  practice  it?  Futurist 
and  Reactionaries  alike  were  caviar  to  Hubbard's; 
the  average  boarder  did  not  share  Millie's  ambitions, 
and  not  one  of  them  possessed  anything  approaching 
her  accurate  and  discerning  social  taste. 

Elmer,  in  the  meanwhile,  was  quite  satisfied  with 
their  lot.  He  would  have  liked  his  own  home  better 
than  the  boarding-house  with  its  semi-publicity,  its 
enforced  amenities,  but  he  did  not  want  to  make  his 
wife  a  drudge;  he  was  the  usual  American  husband. 
He  thought  he  understood  Millie's  attitude  thorough- 
ly. "  Never  mind,  honey,  we  won't  always  have  to 
stay  in  this  old  joint.  Just  you  wait!  The  minute 
I  can  make  it,  why,  us  for  the  swellest  place  there  is, 
and  our  own  bathroom  and  everything !  "  he  declared 
fervently.  "  I  don't  wonder  you  get  to  feeling  rest- 
less. My  great  governor,  seems  to  me  sometimes  that 
if  I  ever  see  another  five  prunes  in  a  saucer,  or  hear  old 
Mrs.  Home  chomping  around  with  those  false  teeth, 
I'll  just  holler  out  loud  and  start  in  to  break  the 
dishes !  Anyhow,  you  don't  have  to  wear  yourself  out, 
cooking  and  sweeping  —  that's  one  thing.  Tell  you 
what:  this  is  ice-cream  night,  isn't  it? '  He  made  a 
wry  face,  but  went  on  cheerfully  — "  well,  that's  better 
than  blanc-mange  night  anyway.  Let's  have  Nettie 
and  Jim  for  dinner,  and  ask  Mrs.  Hubbard  to  leave 
us  four  sit  together  at  the  little  table  by  ourselves. 
I'll  pay  the  extra." 

"  All  right,"  said  Millie  without  much  enthusiasm. 

"We  can  go  to  Charlie  Chaplin  at  the  Orpheum 
afterwards." 

"  All  right.'- 


THE  NOON-MARK  249 

But  upon  their  application  for  the  little  table,  Mrs. 
Hubbard  deprecatingly  revealed  that  it  was  already 
taken,  not  for  that  evening  alone,  but  for  an  indefinite 
period.     A  new  lady-boarder  was  coming. 

"  She  was  awfully  particular  about  being  by  her- 
self, and  soon's  I  found  out  who  she  was,  I  didn't  won- 
der," the  landlady  explained,  not  without  a  pleasur- 
able excitement.  "  It's  that  Mrs.  Evans  —  Mrs. 
Nalia  Gruber  Evans,  you  know.  There  was  a  piece 
in  the  paper  about  her  the  other  day,  I  guess  you 
musta  seen  it.  That  new  Leader  or  what-you-call-it 
for  this  Altruistic  Brotherhood  church  up  here  on 
Worcester  Place.  It  don't  sound  exactly  right  some- 
how to  call  her  the  pastor,  like  you'd  call  a  man,  but 
I  guess  that's  what  it  amounts  to  —  her  being  their 
Leader,  I  mean.  Of  course  you  can  see  how  she'd  like 
to  have  her  own  table  and  eat  to  herself  —  having  to 
do  all  that  deep  thinking  the  way  she  must,  you  know. 
She  wouldn't  want  to  have  general  conversation  go- 
ing on.  So  you  see  how  it  is,  and  I'm  real  sorry  I 
can't  oblige  you,  Mrs.  Hands." 

Millie,  however,  was  not  severely  disappointed ;  she 
had  not  cared  much  about  having  Nettie  and  Jim  to 
dinner;  she  felt  lifelessly  that  she  never  would  care 
to  do  anything  or  see  anybody  in  this  blighting  atmos- 
phere. And  when  Mrs.  Nalia  Gruber  Evans  trailed 
in  that  evening,  and  sat  with  bowed  head  over  the 
little  table,  no  doubt  in  that  deep  thought  which  Mrs. 
Hubbard  had  forecast,  Millie  stared  with  the  rest  of 
the  room,  but  stared  incuriously.  She  could  not  fore- 
see that  it  was  a  signally  beneficent  fate  that  had 
trailed  in,  arrayed  as  a  heavy-set  and  heavy-featured 
lady  with  a  faint  mustache,  and  a  flowing  crepe  cos- 
tume somewhat  soiled  yet  still  majestic. 


XVII 

THE  church  of  the  Altruistic  Brotherhood  on 
Worcester  Place  had  once  inspired  Mr. 
James  Marvin  to  quote  what  may  well  have 
been  the  only  scrap  of  sacred  song  he  recollected  from 
boyhood  days  of  compulsory  and  not  too  frequent  at- 
tendance at  Sunday  School.  "How  firm  a  founda- 
tion, ye  saints  of  the  Lord! v  ejaculated  Jim,  gazing 
at  the  edifice.  "  By  jiminy,  that's  just  what  it  is,  a 
foundation  and  not  one  dinged  brick  more !  "  he  added 
with  profane  hilarity.  He  was  right.  The  Altruis- 
tic counsellors  had  miscalculated  the  fund  necessary, 
or  had  been  too  sanguine  about  raising  it,  or  had 
trusted  it  to  some  wholly  untrustworthy  custodian  or 
in  fine  had  been  overtaken  by  the  ill-luck  that  seems 
to  be  forever  on  the  watch  for  church-builders,  so  that 
the  structure  had  scarcely  attained  to  its  first  story, 
and  had  to  be  roofed  over  with  its  walls  only  a  few 
feet  above  grade.  The  basement  was  fitted  up  tem- 
porarily and  the  faithful  assembled  therein,  bravely 
making  the  best  of  it;  after  all,  they  had  a  mighty 
precedent,  for  did  not  the  earliest  Christians  hold 
service  below  ground  in  the  Catacombs?  There  were 
not  wanting  other  points  of  resemblance  to  the  perse- 
cuted forbears ;  the  sect  struggled  under  a  tyranny  of 
ridicule,  and  adverse  opinion  was  their  Nero.  People 
are  unwarrantably  prejudiced  against  the  notion  of 
women  in  the  pulpit  —  to  mention  only  one  indict- 
ment —  and  the  Altruistic  "  Leaders "  were  invar- 
iably women.     It  must  be  acknowledged  that  they  oc- 

250 


THE  NOON-MARK  251 

casionally  fell  into  errors  which,  while  not  intrinsi- 
cally serious,  somehow  ill  became  a  "Leader."  Mrs. 
Evans'  immediate  predecessor,  for  instance,  after  a 
successful  career  preaching  and  teaching,  disconcerted 
everybody  by  getting  married.  The  shepherd  of  al- 
most any  other  religious  flock  might  have  got  married 
without  a  voice  raised  in  disapproval  but  call  it  in- 
consistent, call  it  unreasonable,  call  it  out-and-out 
stupidity,  call  it  what  you  choose,  the  most  liberal  of 
the  Brothers  balked  at  a  married  parson-ess,  although 
as  it  appeared  he  had  no  objection  to  a  widowed  one. 
Mrs.  Nalia  Gruber  Evans  shortly  thereafter  came  or 
was  summoned  from  some  city  of  the  eastern  states, 
by  what  official  process  nobody  outside  the  congrega- 
tion knew  and  few  inside;  the  origin  of  these  lady 
apostles,  what  they  did  before  becoming  apostles,  was 
likely  to  be  more  or  less  nebulous.  In  Mrs.  Evans' 
case  it  sufficed  that  she  replaced  the  bride,  and  —  in 
technical  language  — "  made  a  hit  "  from  the  first. 
She  had  a  sonorous  and  moving  voice,  an  ample  pres- 
ence —  swathed  in  white  or  pale-tinted  robes  with  one 
hand  supporting  her  brow  which  was  her  most  fav- 
ored attitude  while  officiating  professionally  —  and 
that  abundant  supply  of  words  which  can,  on  a  pinch, 
dispense  with  ideas  and  still  make  a  splendid  showing. 
With  such  an  external  equipment,  anybody  could  see 
with  half  an  eye  that  she  must  possess  a  correspond- 
ingly massive  and  imposing  intellectual  one;  the  Al- 
truistics,  one  and  all,  agreed  with  enthusiasm  that 
they  had  never  had  a  Leader  of  so  powerful  a  men- 
tality. 

Hubbard's  found  her  gravely  affable  but  distant  in 
a  style  which  suited  well  with  her  position.  They 
speculated  as  to  how  much  she  was  paid,  and  whether 


252  THE  NOON-MAKK 

she  had  any  say  about  the  business  management  of 
the  Brotherhood,  and  what  her  legal  status  was  in 
regard  to  such  an  official  requirement  as  performing 
the  marriage  ceremony,  and  if  she  or  the  cult  itself 
supported  the  doctrine  of  healing  without  medical  aid. 
The  size  and  character  of  the  Altruistic  congregation, 
as  revealed  by  the  crowd  about  the  church  Sunday 
mornings  which  people  now  began  to  notice,  elicited 
surprised  comment;  it  was  as  mannerly,  as  well- 
dressed  and  obviously  as  well-to-do  as  the  average 
congregation,  and  much  larger.  The  comfortably  ap- 
pointed automobiles  of  many  members  were  daily  to 
be  seen  at  Hubbard's  door,  whether  their  owners 
came  to  invoke  spiritual  advice  of  the  priestess,  or 
upon  some  mundane  matter  connected  with  theater 
tickets  or  a  dinner  invitation.  Human  curiosity 
could  not  resist  such  a  bait,  and  more  than  one  of 
the  Hubbard  community,  surreptitiously  to  begin 
with,  later  quite  openly,  took  to  visiting  the  Wor- 
cester Place  temple. 

"Oh  yes,  I  went  last  Sunday,  and  I'm  going  again. 
The  folks  are  all  Baptists,  but  I  haven't  ever  been 
very  strict.  Some  people  are  so  narrow,  you  know, 
but  I've  never  been  that  way.  I  don't  believe  in  form- 
ing an  opinion  about  anything  without  first  finding 
out  all  I  can  about  it.  I  like  to  see  and  hear  all  sides, 
for  and  against.  That's  only  fair.  And  then  this 
religion  is  founded  on  the  Bible  just  like  any  other 
religion;  there  isn't  anything  wrong  or  contrary  to 
what  the  Bible  teaches  in  it ;  lots  of  people  think  there 
must  be,  but  there  isn't.  The  Altruistic  Brotherhood 
have  exactly  the  same  Bible  as  everybody  else;  they 
haven't  changed  a  word  of  it;  they  just  go  by  other 
principles  of  interpretation.     Everybody  has  a  right 


THE  NOON-MARK  253 

to  do  that,  so  long  as  they  don't  inject  anything  wrong 
or  immoral,  you  know.  Personally,  I  think  they've 
made  a  wonderful  study  of  it.  I  don't  mean  to  say 
I  grasp  it  all  —  nobody  can  grasp  it  all,  it's  too  big. 
Even  Mrs.  Evans  doesn't  grasp  it  all ;  she  says  so  her- 
self;  she  says  none  of  the  Leaders  claim  to  grasp  it 
all.  If  you  said  you  grasped  it  all,  all  the  truths  of 
the  Bible  just  as  they  ought  to  be  grasped,  it  would 
be  like  saying  you  knew  as  much  as  God,  and  nobody 
wants  to  be  that  presumptious,  I  should  hope!  But 
you  can  take  the  Bible  and  study  according  to  the 
Altruistic  interpretation,  and  go  to  a  Leader  for  in- 
struction just  like  you  can  in  any  church.  You  don't 
necessarily  get  to  be  an  Altruistic  just  because  you 
study  their  faith.  Mrs.  Evans  told  me  particularly 
that  they  welcome  students,  they're  glad  to  have  peo- 
ple study  and  investigate  with  them,  not  that  the 
church  wants  more  members  but  because  they  believe 
that  they  themselves  get  more  light,  and  everybody 
else  gets  more  light,  and  the  more  light  people  get,  the 
better  off  the  whole  world  is.  I  think  that's  a  beauti- 
ful spirit.  It  makes  me  want  to  go  on  and  learn 
more  about  them." 

And  who  was  this  promising  advocate?  Why,  who 
but  young  Mrs.  Elmer  Hands,  to  be  sure!  It  was 
true  that  Millie  had  never  during  her  whole  life 
hitherto  showed  the  slightest  interest  in  or  aptitude 
for  any  kind  of  study,  let  alone  Biblical  or  theo- 
logical ;  this  complete  and  astounding  right-about-face 
bears  witness  to  the  worth  of  the  Altruistic  creed,  or 
to  the  Leader's  abilities,  or  to  certain  traits  in  Mrs. 
Elmer's  composition  which  have  already  come  to  the 
surface  now  and  then.  Along  with  the  rest  of  the 
boarding-house  and  the  community  at  large,  Millie 


254  THE  NOON-MAKK 

had  observed  and  figuratively  taken  notes ;  but  where- 
as a  good  many  —  doubtless  those  prejudiced  and 
narrow  sectarians  referred  to  —  expressed  themselves 
to  the  effect  that  Mrs.  Evans  had  a  pretty  good  thing 
of  it,  that  anybody  with  a  glib  tongue  could  be  an 
Altruistic  Leader,  and  that  the  cult  itself  was  all 
hokum,  harmless  perhaps,  but  sensational  and  silly 
—  whereas  there  were  numbers  who  discerned  only 
something  to  scoff  at  after  the  above  fashion,  Millie 
ranged  herself  with  the  appreciative,  the  intelligent, 
the  open-minded  minority  who  thought  there  might  be 
something  in  it.  Incidentally  —  or  rather  you  might 
say  primarily,  for  it  was  her  first  step  —  she  found 
out  to  a  penny  how  much  there  was  in  it  for  the 
Leader,  a  by  no  means  inconsiderable  salary;  and 
over  and  above  that,  a  certain  position  and  prestige 
which,  while  possibly  not  exactly  of  the  sort  Millie 
sought  at  an  earlier  date,  were  still  desirable.  There 
were  the  fleshpots  of  the  faithful,  their  entertainments 
and  presents  and  motor-cars,  and  the  apartment  in 
the  swellest  of  swell  locations  which  they  were  going 
ere  long  to  provide  for  their  Leaders.  The  briefest  of 
surveys  must  make  it  apparent  that  there  was  no  rea- 
son why  Mrs.  Mildred  Aymar  Hands  should  not 
occupy  that  post  with  all  its  advantages,  as  well  as 
Mrs.  Nalia  Gruber  Evans.  She  had  an  attractive 
personality,  a  good  voice,  a  talent  for  declamation,  a 
sufficient  commodity  of  language,  a  pliant  conscience, 
a  small,  inexpensive,  handy  intelligence;  and  she  had 
specialized  in  the  most  profitable  and  showiest  use  of 
every  one  of  these  gifts  almost  since  the  day  she  was 
born. 

This  was  the  new  branch  of  sensation-achieving  ac- 
tivity whose  existence  she  had  divined  —  or,  at  least, 


THE  NOON-MARK  255 

it  filled  the  bill  to  a  nicety.  That  no  arduous  course 
of  preparation  was  needed  may  be  inferred  from 
Millie's  own  words  just  quoted;  one  session  with  Mrs. 
Evans  furnished  this  apt  pupil  with  all  that  high- 
sounding  and  unanswerable  argument.  I  repeat,  un- 
anwserable;  for  let  the  intellectual  giant  who  doubts 
try  to  answer  it!  Millie  not  only  went  on  with  the 
study  and  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  according 
to  Altruistic  principles,  she  went  on,  in  the  vulgar 
phrase,  like  a  house  afire.  Thanks  to  what  cynics 
might  have  called  a  native  facility  at  patter,  she  mas- 
tered Mrs.  Evans'  methods  of  exposition  with  scarcely 
any  exertion  inside  a  few  months.  She  did  more ;  she 
perfected  herself  in  the  by-play  or  stage-business 
which  those  same  cynics  affected  to  believe  character- 
istic of  faker-ism.  You  might  see  Millie  posed  like 
the  Thinker,  sweeping  about  in  classic  draperies, 
aping  Nalia  Gruber  with  a  success  which  that  Leader 
might  well  have  viewed  with  alarm.  However, 
Nalia,  in  another  vulgar  phrase,  was  not  born  yester- 
day ;  she  weighed  a  hundred  and  seventy  and  was  fif- 
teen years  older  than  this  formidable  disciple,  but 
she  knew  her  job  and  her  world  through  and  through, 
and  was  not  fearful  of  being  dispossessed.  Moreover, 
there  were  other  Altruistic  pulpits  besides  that  on 
Worcester  Place,  enough  to  go  around ;  the  creed  was 
of  a  strong  and  spreading  growth,  and  good  Leaders 
were  at  a  premium.  Mrs.  Evans,  as  has  been  hinted, 
was  an  exceptionally  good  Leader,  capable  of  dis- 
coursing with  eloquence,  with  erudition,  with  pro- 
fundity on  any  subject,  or  for  that  matter  on  no  sub- 
ject ! 

"  Why,  I  know  nothing  —  but  oh,  dear  friends,  does 
any  one  of  us  know  anything?  "  she  would  ask  ear- 


25G  THE  NOON-MARK 

nestly.  And  that  was  a  facer  —  another  unanswerable 
argument.  "  But  even  knowing  nothing,  or  perhaps 
because  we  know  nothing,  can  we  not  fix  our  mental 
gaze  upon  the  Infinite?  Nothing  exists  but  Infinity 
—  Infinity  which  is  Cosmic  Truth,  Cosmic  Beauty, 
Cosmic  Goodness.  Let  us  try  to  grasp  these  cosmic 
realities,  let  us  break  the  bonds  in  which  our  errors 
of  belief  have  shackled  us!  Pain  and  Evil  have  no 
cosmic  existence;  the  human  mind,  reasoning  blindly 
from  cause  to  effect,  has  but  apperceived  and  named 
the  reverse  of  Happiness  and  Good,  but  this  reverse 
is  a  shadow,  not  a  reality  Wanting  the  true  light,  as 
our  text  this  morning  puts  it '  Until  the  day  break '  we 
have  been  obsessed  by  this  error,  but  now  '  the 
shadows  flee  aicay/  We  know  that  there  is  no  Cosmic 
Wrong  in  the  universe ;  there  is  only  the  non-existent 
shadow  which  error  has  imposed  upon  our  too  believ- 
ing spirits.  There  is  no  Cosmic  Death ;  there  is  Cos- 
mic Life.  There  is  no  Cosmic  Suffering;  there  is 
Cosmic  Joy  .  .  ."  etc.  When  Mrs.  Evans  resonantly 
and  powerfully  intoned  such  passages,  he  would  have 
been  a  clod  indeed  whom  she  failed  to  impress;  the 
reasoning  was  at  once  so  close,  subtle  and  elevated. 
Altruistics  remarked  enthusiastically  that  "  she  car- 
ried you  right  along  with  her." 

No,  Nalia  was  in  no  danger  of  being  superseded. 
Nevertheless,  Millie  persevered  with  her  "  study,"  and 
even  began  tentatively  to  practice  when  opportunity 
offered.  Rochester  Avenue  received  her  in  this  new 
r61e  with  curiosity,  and  not  infrequently  with  ap- 
plause which,  however,  did  not  connote  approval. 
Most  of  them  were  interested  simply  to  see  how  well 
little  Millie  Aymar  whom  they  had  known  all  her  life 
could  "  do  it  " ;  on  the  Avenue  she  was  doomed  forever 


THE  NOON-MARK  257 

to  be  the  prophet  without  honor  in  his  own  country. 
A  good  many,  here  and  there,  had  already  gone  to 
hear  Mrs.  Evans,  preferring  to  get  their  enlighten- 
ment from  headquarters,  and  of  these  one  or  two  had 
Altruistic  leanings  but  the  district,  as  a  whole,  Meth- 
odists, Baptists  and  the  rest,  stood  stolidly  by  the 
creeds  of  its  forefathers.  Mr.  Weaver,  it  may  be  for 
professional  reasons,  never  committed  himself  to  an 
opinion  for  or  against  any  church  though  his  working- 
day  was  so  constant  a  reminder  of  our  mortality  that 
he  could  hardly  be  expected  to  subscribe  to  the  no- 
death  doctrine.  "  That  would  be  mighty  poor  busi- 
ness for  Weaver/'  Jim  Marvin  pointed  out  with  gross 
mirth.  Mrs.  Stieffel,  for  her  part,  was  much  im- 
pressed with  that  feature  of  the  new  belief ;  her  faded 
eyes  filled  as  she  listened  to  Millie.  "  O  my,  it  would 
be  beautiful !  "  she  sighed  wistfully.  Her  husband,  on 
the  contrary,  when  he  could  focus  his  attention  which 
was  a  sad  effort  for  him  nowadays,  would  wear  fleet- 
ingly  a  puzzled  and  worried  and  even  a  little  fright- 
ened look.  Frank,  whose  memory,  as  is  the  case  with 
most  ageing  people,  served  him  better  for  events  years 
gone  by  than  for  those  of  yesterday,  fumblingly  re- 
called the  b'hanas  and  b'hanees  of  the  California  set- 
tlement at  hearing  this  transcendental  talk ;  some  far- 
fetched, fantastic  kinship  between  it  and  theirs 
alarmed  old  decencies,  old  prejudices  within  him.  He 
wanted  to  know  if  the  Altruistics  lived  in  tents !  It 
was  rather  pitiful. 

Millie  did  not  proselytize ;  hers  was  no  flaming  mis- 
sionary spirit,  and  found  itself  abundantly  satisfied 
with  an  audience  upon  whom  to  try  this  or  that  ef- 
fect. After  all,  the  only  genuine  convert  is  he  who 
converts  himself;  and  indeed  it  was  the  part  of  wis- 


258  THE  NOON-MARK 

doni  not  to  assume  the  responsibilities  of  conversion. 
Millie  was  quite  sharp  enough  to  see  that  whatever 
doctrines  Mrs.  Evans  preached,  the  one  she  stead- 
fastly practiced  was  that  of  not  getting  into  trouble 
with  the  police  or  Health  Department,  as  have  certain 
too  zealous  apostles  of  advanced  ideas  heretofore; 
nothing  that  that  canny  Leader  said  could  be  con- 
strued as  an  assault  upon  either  morals  or  medicine, 
and  Millie  was  fully  awake  to  the  advisability  of  that 
caution.  She  would  never  have  joined  any  body  of 
b'hanas !  "  Oh  no,  you've  got  it  wrong ;  you  couldn't 
have  followed  her  all  the  way  through,  I  don't  believe. 
Mrs.  Evans  couldn't  have  said  that  there  wasn't  any 
such  thing  as  pain  or  sickness  in  the  world,  because 
she  knows  and  everybody  knows  that  there  is;  there's 
lots  of  pain  and  sickness,  lots  of  it.  It  would  be 
ridiculous  to  say  there  wasn't,"  Millie  explained  flu- 
ently. "  What  she  said  was  that  there  wouldn't  be 
any  if  we  could  all  of  us  escape  from  error.  But  we're 
just  human  beings  and  we  can't.  Error  doesn't  mean 
the  little  simple  mistakes  we  all  of  us  make  every 
day  of  our  lives,  you  know  —  although  of  course  they 
are  a  part,  an  infinitesmal  part  of  the  whole  tremend- 
ous sum.  Error  is  the  negation  of  Cosmic  Truth  — 
that  simply  means  universal  truth,  you  know;  and  a 
negative  quantity  has  no  existence  whatever.  Why, 
you  can  see  that  for  yourself.  That's  what  in  the 
Altruistic's  interpretation  is  called  error,  and  all  the 
things  that  people  call  ill-luck  or  trouble  or  suffering 
are  nothing  but  that.  Negation  of  Universal  Truth, 
Universal  Goodness.  .  .  ." 

Thus  Millie  in  the  family  circle;  when  asked  to 
"  address  a  meeting,"  an  honor  which  had  befallen 
her  several  times  of  late,  she  adopted  a  more  formal, 


THE  NOON-MARK  259 

less  chatty  style  —  as  did  Mrs.  Evans  herself.  But 
even  on  those  occasions  she  always  suggested  a  ques- 
tion-box, or  some  species  of  homely  forum  afterwards, 
again  taking  pattern  from  Mrs.  Evans.  Let  there  be 
light,  they  both  quoted  devoutly ;  let  everyone  inquire, 
find  fault,  come  forward  with  the  knottiest  problems 
he  could  think  up ;  the  creed  was  not  afraid  of  honest 
doubt,  honest  skepticism ;  it  wras  a  plain  creed,  for  in- 
telligent, plain-thinking  people,  both  Millie  and  Mrs. 
Evans  and  presumably  all  the  other  Leaders  declared 
consistently,  and  writh  justice  as  the  excerpts  from 
their  utterances  prove.  Could  anything,  for  instance, 
exceed  in  plainness  and  lucidity  Millie's  exposition 
of  the  nature  of  Error?  Yet  alas,  there  were  those 
wTho  could  not  understand,  of  course,  because  in  real- 
ity they  would  not  understand. 

"Well,  I  don't  know — "  Nettie  said,  hesitating. 
"  It  sounds  all  right  —  but  I  don't  know.  It  seems 
as  if  you  said  that  everything  bad  that  happens  to  us 
was  our  own  fault,  and  I  guess  that's  so  sometimes  — " 
She  paused,  and  considered.  "  I  guess  it's  so  pretty 
often.  But  I  know  plenty  of  real  nice,  good  people 
that  never  do  anything  wrong,  yet  they  have  an  awTful 
time.  Take  poor  Father.  What's  he  ever  done  to  be 
laid  up  with  locomotor,  or  whatever  it  is  that's  the 
matter  with  him?  I  don't  believe  he  ever  had  a  wrong 
thought  in  his  life,  let  alone  done  anything  wrong. 
What  d'you  mean,  Negation,  anyhow?  What's  Nega- 
tion got  to  do  with  it?  " 

Millie  was  not  so  ready  at  this  date  as  she  became 
later.  And  as  she  sat  for  an  instant  defeated,  a  little 
out  of  countenance,  feeling  for  the  proper  weapon, 
Nettie  went  on :  "  Anyhow,  Father  never  did  any 
negating,  that  he  knew  of,  I  don't  believe.     But  sup- 


260  THE  NOON-MARK 

posing  he  had  and  supposing  it  was  the  wickedest  sin 
a  person  could  commit,  it  seems  as  if  he'd  good  and 
paid  up  for  it  by  this  time  —  eleven  years  helpless  and 
always  in  pain  somewhere !  They  might  let  him  off 
now ;  /  would  if  I  was  running  things  — " 

"Oh  hush,  Nettie !  It  ain't  right  to  talk  that  way, 
and  you  don't  mean  it  anyhow,"  her  aunt  interposed, 
with  an  apprehensive  glance  around  the  room.  Julia 
had  never  been  an  ardent  churchwoman;  she  never 
had  the  time.  The  Sabbath  day  meant  for  her  no 
cessation  of  work,  only  a  difference  in  the  kind.  Un- 
consciously she  substituted  for  religious  faith,  a  stolid 
acceptance  of  her  lot,  on  the  principle  that  it  might 
be  worse,  and  with  a  superstitious  dread  of  its  being 
made  worse  by  some  indistinct  Authority,  if  she  impu- 
dently meddled  with  it  or  complained  about  it. 
"  You  go  on,  Millie ;  tell  some  more.  You  know  Net 
just  says  things  to  be  contrary  sometimes,"  she  said 
eagerly. 

Nettie  was  opening  her  lips  in  denial  and  chal- 
lenge when,  looking  upon  the  other,  a  second  thought 
gave  her  pause.  She  wondered  at  herself  for  not 
having  noticed  before  that  Aunt  Julia  was  getting 
older  —  was  getting  to  be  an  old  woman ;  maybe  it 
was  those  last  teeth  she  had  lost.  But  she  stooped 
over  more;  and  she  was  not  a  good  color,  grayish  or 
yellowish-grayish.  "  To  be  sure,  poor  Aunt  Jule 
never  was  much  on  complexion,"  the  girl  reflected 
with  a  stroke  of  pity. 

Millie  had  got  a  second  wind  by  now.  "  Why,  loads 
of  people  talk  like  that,  Aunt  Julia,"  she  said  with  a 
patient,  forbearing,  explanatory  air.  "  That's  the 
first  objection  that  occurs  to  everybody.  They're  all 
the  time  saying  just  like  Net,  that  things  aren't  fair. 


THE  NOON-MARK  261 

They  don't  realize  that   when  they  talk  that  way, 
they're  just  proving  the  Altruistic  interpretation  of 
the  great  Cosmic  Design,"  said  Millie,  appropriately 
reverent.     Then  she  continued  in  a  more  direct  collo- 
quial style.     "Now  just  stop  and  think:  we  all  have 
our  troubles,  whatever  we  do,  don't  we?     You  never 
heard  of  anybody  that  got  through  life  without  hav- 
ing some  trouble  some  time,  now  did  you?     If  we  all 
had  everything  our  own  way  to  suit  us,  we'd  every- 
one be  rich  and  happy  and  have  our  own  good  health, 
an(j  —  and  —  er  —  plenty  of  money   and  everything 
we  wanted.     The  reason  we  don't  isn't  because  of  any- 
thing we  ourselves  have  done;  for  instance,  we  didn't 
get  ourselves  born,   did  we?     We  can't   help  being 
here,  can  we?     No  more  can  we  help  the  Error  that's 
all  about  us.     It's  fastened  on  each  and  every  one  of 
us  alike.     Call  it  unfair !     Why,  the  Cosmic  Scheme 
is  fairness  itself.     Because,  don't  you  see,  it  won't 
permit  of  any  exceptions.     We  all  have  to  stand  the 
consequences'  of  Error.     On  the  Cosmic  Plane,  every- 
body is  even.     What  we  take  to  be  inequalities  are 
isolated  instances  of  Negation.     If  we  could  see  with 
our  bodily  eyes  the  whole  mass  of  humanity  all  at 
once,  with  all  its  troubles  and  its  blessings,  we'd  see 
that  it  was  at  an  absolute  level.     But  of  course  that's 
impossible.     Well,  our  spiritual  vision  can't  be  any 
stronger    than    our    physical    vision,    naturally.     If 
there's  a  hill  in  front  of  me  obstructing  my  view,  I 
can't  see  around  it,"  Millie  said  most  reasonably  — 
"  and  in  the  same  way  I  can't  see  around  the  spiritual 
obstructions  —  the    Negations.     They    seem    just   as 
real  to  me  as  any  real  hill." 

Nettie  sat  silent,  unable  to  disentangle  and  formu- 
late a  single  one  of  the  hundred  counter  arguments 


262  THE  NOON-MABK 

that  crowded  into  her  mind.  The  difficulty  was  that 
one  somehow  could  not  come  fairly  to  grips  with  Mil- 
lie's statements;  the  target  eluded  aim  like  a  will-o'- 
the-wisp,  her  words  appeared  to  build  an  invincible 
wan  —  but  marching  to  the  assault,  one  battered  at 
nothing !  To  Nettie  sham  thinking  was  as  incompre- 
hensible as  any  other  sort  of  sham ;  she  naively  sup- 
posed that  there  must  be  an  idea  behind  all  this  mist  of 
language,  and  that  the  fault  lay  with  her  own  slow- 
moving  utilitarian  intelligence.  Among  the  Altruis- 
tic congregation  were  business-men  she  knew,  solid, 
practical,  successful  men,  who  must  understand  and 
believe  in  the  new  creed  since  —  ultimate  test !  —  they 
gave  their  money  to  its  support.  She  would  look 
smart,  wouldn't  she,  setting  herself  up  to  say  it  was 
all  rigmarole,  in  the  face  of  Mr.  So-and-So  and  Mr. 
Such-Another,  Nettie  thought  humbly.  And  there  sat 
her  aunt,  the  needle  for  once  still  and  the  piece  of 
work  dangling  down,  while  she  listened  with  all  her 
senses  and  with  a  look  fluttering  between  hope  and 
fear  such  as  Nettie  had  never  before  seen  on  her  face. 

"  Do  you  understand  all  that,  Aunt  Julia?  "  Nettie 
asked  her  abruptly. 

Julia  started,  turning  vague  eyes;  then  she  shook 
herself  together  with  a  slight  sigh,  falling  to  on  the 
sewing  with  renewed  energy.  "Why  no,  I  don't 
know  as  I  do  all  of  it,"  she  said  apologetically  "  but 
it's  kind  of  comforting,  don't  you  think?  " 

"<  Comforting'?"  repeated  Nettie.  "Oh,  I  see. 
You  mean  that  about  our  all  being  in  the  same  boat 
together,  kind  of?  At  least  that's  what  I  understood 
Millie  to  say.  Well,  there  is  something  in  that.  If 
Somebody  — "  said  Nettie  with  some  shyness,  for  she 
was  not  given  to  self-revelation  — "  if  Somebody  were 


THE  NOON-MARK  2G3 

to  offer  me  the  chance  to  be  the  only  happy  person  in 
the  world,  I  don't  believe  I'd  take  it.  I'd  feel  like 
saying : '  Why,  it's  all  right  the  way  it  is,  God.  Much 
obliged,  but  if  You  don't  mind,  I'll  just  keep  along 
with  the  rest  of  'em.'  " 

Millie  was  shocked.  "  I  know  you  don't  mean  any 
harm,  but  that's  an  awfully  familiar  way  to  talk,  Net. 
And  when  it  comes  to  understanding,  of  course  we 
can't  understand  everything  about  the  Altruistic  in- 
terpretation; we  just  have  to  believe  without  under- 
standing, like  we  do  the  Bible  itself.  You  believe 
everything  that's  in  the  Bible,  don't  you?  ,: 

"  Why  yes,  of  course.     Everybody  does." 

"Well,  you  don't  understand  it.  You  don't  under- 
stand the  miracles,  but  you  know  they're  so,  because 
the  Bible  tells  you.  If  people  would  believe  now- 
adays the  same  as  they  did  in  Bible  times,  there'd  be 
miracles  again.  There  wouldn't  be  any  more  sick- 
ness — " 

"Wouldn't  there,  Millie?"  cried  out  Julia,  aban- 
doning her  seam  again,  in  the  same  half-hopeful,  half- 
frightened  suspense. 

"  Oh,  but  they  won't,  you  know !  "  said  Millie  rather 
hastily  and  not  without  alarm.  "  I  mean  they  won't 
believe.  That's  the  trouble.  Mrs.  Evans  says  if  they 
would  only  have  faith  enough,  the  most  miraculous 
things  would  be  perfectly  simple  and  possible;  there 
wouldn't  be  any  more  death  or  pain  or  sorrow  in  the 
world,  because  we  would  have  got  rid  of  Error 
through  our  faith.  But  she  says  in  all  her  exper- 
ience she  never  has  known  anybody  to  have  that 
strength  of  belief;  even  the  best  never  had  enough; 
they  never  had  half  enough,"  Millie  reiterated  with 
vigorous  emphasis.     "  She  always  tells  everybody  if 


264  THE  NOON-MARK 

they're  sick  to  go  to  a  doctor.  You  may  think  you 
have  faith  enough  to  cure  you,  but  you  haven't.  And 
besides,  it  isn't  just  you  alone,  it's  the  whole  world 
that's  got  to  believe! " 

Julia's  face  fell.  "  Oh,  well  — !  "  she  sighed,  with 
her  fatalistic  obedience.  Nettie  listened,  drawing  her 
brows  as  she  might  have  over  a  balance-sheet  wherein 
lurked  some  obscure  mistake.  Obviously  the  day  of 
miracles  was  indefinitely  postponed;  a  whole  world 
of  believers  in  the  Altruistic  interpretation  was  a 
pretty  large  order!  And  in  the  striking  convenience 
of  this  arrangement,  there  was  to  be  felt  rather  than 
seen  a  shadowy  resemblance  to  certain  mundane 
schemes  for  getting  along  that  would  not  bear  too 
close  investigation.  If  Nettie  had  put  her  thought 
into  words  she  would  have  said  that  then  and  there 
for  the  first  time  the  thing  began  to  sound  and  look 
"  phony."  What  she  did  say,  however,  was :  "  Well, 
Mrs.  Evans  is  one  of  your  Leaders.  Hasn't  she  got 
enough  faith?  " 

"  No,  she  says  not.  She  prays  and  studies  all  the 
time  to  improve  her  faith  —  strengthen  it  and  in- 
crease its  growth,  you  know.  She'll  do  that  with  any- 
body else,  too,  of  course  she'll  help  you  all  she  can, 
giving  you  instruction  with  prayer  and  interpreta- 
tion ;  but  trying  to  get  faith  and  really  getting  it  are 
two  very  different  things,  she  says.  It  takes  a  long 
while;  people  get  discouraged  and  won't  keep  on. 
That  shows,  she  says,  the  power  of  Error,  and  the 
struggle  the  world  is  going  to  have  to  set  itself  free." 


XVIII 

WHEN  the  war  came  on,  there  was  probably 
no  citizen  of  this  republic,  with  equal  in- 
telligence and  character,  so  indifferent  to 
it  as  that  gem  of  stenographers  and  office-girls,  Nettie 
Stieffel.  Hers  was  the  ideal  neutrality.  It  was  not 
that  she  lacked  the  perception  of  right  and  justice;  on 
the  contrary,  that  was  one  of  her  strongest  traits. 
But  Nettie's  principles  were  strictly  personal,  for  her 
own  use  in  the  everyday  life  of  her  own  world.  It 
was  impossible  for  her  to  take  any  interest  in  a  strug- 
gle of  Right  against  Wrong  conducted  by  people  she 
did  not  know,  in  countries  on  the  other  side  of  the 
globe.  In  a  discussion  of  banking  methods  she  would 
have  taken  sides  vigorously ;  but  to  be  pro-German  or 
pro-Ally,  and  to  argue  and  squabble  and  get  red  in 
the  face  and  all  but  come  to  blows  in  the  ardor  of 
opposing  partisanship  seemed  to  her  a  waste  of  time 
and  breath  and  energy.  Let  them  fight  it  out  in 
Europe;  it  was  Europe's  quarrel.  Her  adherence 
would  not  avail  to  help  either  party ;  and  anyhow  she 
was  too  busy,  she  had  to  work,  and  there  was  enough 
on  her  mind  already.  Her  limited  imagination  re- 
fused a  hearing  even  to  the  tales  of  horror  and  suffer- 
ing that  circulated  so  copiously,  classing  them  all  with 
the  sensational  rubbish,  divorces,  elopements,  finan- 
cial scandals,  which  they  had  crowded  off  the  front 
page. 

"  They've    got    to    print    something,"    said    Nettie 
scornfully.     "  Well,  it  never  did  take  me  long  to  look 

265 


266  THE  NOON-MAKK 

over  the  paper  in  the  morning,  and  now  I  get  through 
quicker  than  ever  —  just  the  market  reports  and  the 
bank  statements  if  there's  any  published,  and  the  real- 
estate-and-building  column,  and  of  course  the  deaths, 
that's  all."  She  might  have  added  that  she  was 
keenly  interested  and  kept  herself  very  well  informed 
in  such  subjects  as  foreign  exchange  rates,  the  mov- 
ments  of  stocks  conditioned  more  or  less  on  the  move- 
ments of  the  European  armies,  and  the  bank's  attitude 
on  the  question  of  German  and  Allied  loans ;  but  Net- 
tie had  her  own  standards  —  doubtless  some  of  them 
amusingly  out  of  proportion  —  about  business  discre- 
tion, business  reticence,  and  moreover  she  had  long 
ago  decided  to  save  herself  the  trouble  of  making  a 
choice  between  things  suitable  to  repeat  and  things 
unsuitable  by  never  repeating  anything  at  all. 

Europe's  quarrel  had  been  going  on  for  fully  a  year 
before  she  discovered  that  it  was  likely  to  become  her 
quarrel,  too,  in  spite  of  her  detachment.  The  scarcity 
and  soaring  price  of  certain  commodities  pointed  the 
moral  for  her  more  plainly  than  any  sermonizing  upon 
the  war's  monstrous  cost  to  all  humanity  in  common. 
Hands  across  the  sea,  indeed !  Nobody  on  earth  could 
escape  that  wide-flung  and  most  horrid  grasp.  Even 
then,  however,  Nettie's  main  emotion  was  only  one  of 
dismayed  surprise  at  the  number  and  variety  of  sup- 
plies for  which  directly  or  indirectly  we  depended 
upon  those  alien,  distant  peoples,  speaking  gibberish, 
frantically  tearing  one  another's  eyes  out  —  such 
was  Nettie's  conception  of  them.  She  grumbled  a 
good  deal,  finding  fault  with  all  of  them  indiscrimi- 
nately. "  Well,  I  do  wish  the  everlasting  idiots  would 
quit,  and  let  everything  settle  down  again.  What 
d'you  suppose  the  latest  is?    Why,  I  can't  get  a  hair- 


THE  NOON-MARK  267 

net  —  just  a  plain,  ordinary  hair-net  that  used  to  be 
two  for  a  quarter  —  on  account  of  the  war.  Doesn't 
that  pass  everything  you  ever  heard  of?  The  idea  of 
the  war  knocking  the  bottom  out  of  hair-nets !  Seems 
they  were  all  made  in  Austria,  or  at  least  the  people 
that  made  'em  were  Austrians  and  now  the  men  are 
all  fighting,  of  course,  and  the  women  have  gone  into 
the  munition-factories,  so  there  aren't  any  more  hair- 
nets. You  can't  get  one  for  love  or  money,"  com- 
plained Nettie,  to  whom  this  was  a  very  real  depriva- 
tion ;  her  tidily  stylish  coiffure  missed  the  aid.  "  I 
can't  get  over  it.  The  war  —  and  hair-nets !  You 
wouldn't  think  there  could  possibly  be  any  connection. 
About  the  dyes  and  stockings  and  everything  else  that 
came  from  Germany,  it's  easy  to  understand.  This 
last  lot  of  ink  that  we've  got  at  the  bank  is  awful 
stuff,  they  say  the  ink-peoples'  chemists  and  their  best 
workmen  were  all  foreigners  and  of  course  they've 
mostly  gone  back  to  their  own  countries,  so  the  ink's 
being  made  by  somebody  that  doesn't  know  how,  or 
else  they  can't  get  the  right  materials  any  more;  it 
smells  fit  to  knock  you  down.  But  hair-nets !  If  that 
isn't  the  limit !  " 

She  made  these  remarks  to  Mr.  James  Marvin,  and 
he  agreed  that  it  did  seem  to  be  a  kind  of  small-pota- 
toes trick.  "  But  in  this  war  all  the  small  businesses 
and  the  little  people  are  getting  it  in  the  neck  any- 
how," he  added  musingly ;  "  the  big  ones  keep  booming 
right  along.  Anybody  that's  in  steel  or  oil  or  these 
high  explosives  or  army  equipment  or  staple  stuff  to 
eat  —  Gee !  "  ejaculated  Jim  with  envy.  "  Those  fel- 
lows would  like  to  see  the  war  run  along  for  years  — 
and  if  it  don't  it  won't  be  their  fault,"  he  finished  with 
a  secret,  meaning  look. 


268  THE  NOON-MARK 

Nettie  heard  such  statements  many  times  a  day,  and 
never  without  the  inward  recoil  of  a  just,  sensible 
and  kindly  character;  but  she  preserved  her  imper- 
sonal attitude.  No  use  contradicting  them,  she 
opined;  they  didn't  know  what  they  were  talking 
about,  but  she  herself  knew  precious  little  more. 
Why  argue?  And  besides,  by  to-morrow  they  would 
have  forgotten  what  they  said  and  be  going  around 
reporting  something  else,  as  like  as  not  diametrically 
opposed !  "  Looks  like  easy  money.  But  I  guess 
they  have  their  troubles  too,  the  same  as  everybody 
else,"  was  all  she  said. 

Jim  let  his  eyes  stray  over  her  from  head  to  foot, 
pausing  quite  frankly  on  the  way  at  the  localities 
which  met  his  most  emphatic  approval.  As  always 
her  dress  was  smart,  suitable  to  herself  and  the  occa- 
sion, complete  in  the  last  detail.  Another  woman 
might  not  unjustifiably  have  assumed  that  with  such 
a  face  and  figure,  she  could  carry  off  any  costume; 
but  not  Nettie.  She  exercised  a  vigilant  taste,  never 
bought  carelessly  or  mistakenly,  and  yet  contrived 
not  to  give  too  much  time  or  money  to  the  task.  Mar- 
vin, in  a  man's  uncomprehending  fashion,  felt  her  ap- 
pearance to  be  absolutely  satisfactory ;  it  was  a  credit 
to  him  personally.  In  strong  contrast  to  her  former 
admirer,  young  McQuair,  Jim  did  not  at  all  mind  a 
battery  of  stares  directed  upon  his  companion  by 
other  men ;  it  flattered  him.  He  considered  that  he 
himself  was  "  not  so  worse  "  when  it  came  to  dress 
and  looks ;  they  made  a  classy  couple,  by  — ! 

"  Yeah,  shouldn't  wonder !  "  he  said  in  answer  to 
her  last  words.  "  Well,  how's  it  been  treating  you 
here  lately?  Things  coming  your  way?  "  The  ques- 
tion was  a  natural  one,  for  he  had  not  seen  her  for 


THE  NOON-MARK  269 

some  weeks ;  there  had  intervened  one  of  those  periodic 
disappearances  about  which  few  were  so  tactless  as  to 
inquire,  although  to  those  who  did  James  invariably 
furnished  a  ready  and  tripping  explanation,  not  too 
hard  to  believe.  He  had  been  in  New  Orleans,  El 
Paso,  Havana,  following  the  races ;  he  had  been  down 
at  French  Lick  taking  the  baths  for  a  bothersome 
little  touch  of  rheumatism;  he  had  been  up  in  the 
Canadian-Pacific  country  looking  over  a  wheat-ranch 
proposition  for  some  parties  in  New  York,  etc.,  etc. 
This  time  he  returned  in  funds,  it  seemed  —  which 
was  not  always  the  case  —  and  his  first  act  was  to 
take  Nettie  out  to  dinner  at  the  highest-priced,  most 
stylish  restaurant  in  town.  Mr.  Marvin,  as  he  him- 
self not  infrequently  asserted,  was  no  piker.  Now 
they  loitered  over  the  last  of  the  meal  in  the  be- 
frescoed  and  be-mirrored  cafe  at  the  Hotel  Preston 
until  it  should  be  time  for  the  theatre  to  open ;  Jim 
had  tickets  to  "The  Thirteenth  Chair."  He  went 
on :  "  You  were  working  pretty  hard  when  I  left. 
Still  at  it?" 

"  Yeah.     Have  to." 

"  What's  the  big  idea?  Why  don't  you  stick  those 
old  tightwads  at  the  bank  for  a  raise?  They'd  give 
it  to  you  quick  enough,  rather  than  lose  you." 

"  Oh,  I  wouldn't  care  to  do  anything  like  that.  I'm 
making  more  as  it  is  than  they'd  want  to  give  me; 
and  I  don't  mind  work.  I  like  it.  It's  only  that  I 
can't  seem  to  keep  the  money  from  going  out  as  fast 
as  it  comes  in.  Everything  costs  so,"  said  Nettie. 
She  wagged  her  head,  disapproving  but  helpless. 
"  Y^ou've  got  to  have  a  whole  lot  of  money  to  get  along 
nowadays." 

"  <  A  whole  lot  of  money,'  "  Jim  repeated  after  her 


270  THE  NOON-MARK 

and  looked  at  her  sidelong  over  his  cigar,  with  a  kind 
of  tentative  grin.  "  Well  now,  there  must  be  a  whole 
lot  of  men  ready  and  willing  to  make  it  for  you;  I 
know  one  of  'em.  Why  not  give  him  a  chance?  " 
"  Oh,  go  on,  Jim !  Don't  start  that  all  over  again !  " 
"Why,  why  not,  Nettie?"  He  began  to  plead. 
"  See  here,  you  talk  about  liking  to  work,  but  you 
know  you  aren't  having  any  such  grand  time.  The 
worst  of  it  is  there  isn't  any  come-out  to  it.  You 
might  keep  on  working  forever,  and  what  would  you 
have  to  show  for  it  in  the  end?  Nothing  except  that 
vou've  taken  care  of  the  bunch  at  home!  There's 
nothing  in  it  for  you,  and  you're  entitled  to  something, 
aren't  you?  You've  done  it  long  enough.  Let  some 
of  them  get  busy  and  take  some  of  it  off  of  you,  or 
take  care  of  themselves  anyhow."  His  voice  softened. 
"  Say,  we'd  have  lots  of  fun.  And  there  wouldn't  be 
anything  too  good  for  you  either;  you  know  I'm  no 
piker.  I'm  not  going  in  competition  with  John  D.  or 
Andy  Library  yet,"  said  Jim  with  humorously  exag- 
gerated modesty,  "  but  I'm  making  good  money  — " 

Nettie  asked  inwardly  :  "  Yes,  but  how  are  you  mak- 
ing it?"  It  was  thus  that  she  steadied  herself 
against  Jim's  attacks  which  moved  her  more  than  she 
would  admit.  In  defiance  of  her  better  judgment, 
something  within  her  obstinately  persisted  in  liking 
Jim ;  and  there  was  at  least  a  grain  of  truth  in  what 
he  had  just  been  saying  about  the  family  and  her 
profitless  future.  She  was  twenty-eight  years  old, 
and  what  had  she  to  show  for  her  twenty-eight  years, 
sure  enough?  Two  hundred  and  fourteen  dollars  in 
the  savings-bank,  and  a  fine,  barely  perceptible  line 
between  her  eyebrows  that  would  be  a  wrinkle  before 
she  knew  it.     Before  she  knew  it,  the  best  of  her  life 


THE  NOON-MAKK  271 

would  be  gone,  maybe  it  was  gone  already ;  she  would 
be  old,  and  old  people  don't  have  any  fun,  no  difference 
how  good  they  have  been,  how  hard  they  have  tried  to 
do  their  duty.  Nettie  had  an  instant  of  shuddering 
panic;  it  was  as  if  some  door  into  the  farther  years 
had  dropped  ajar,  letting  in  upon  her  a  faint,  icy 
zephyr  from  the  bleak,  straightened  corridor  of  age. 
In  another  instant,  glancing  at  the  reflections  and 
counter-reflections  of  her  own  figure  in  the  opposing 
pier-glasses  and  inadvertently  catching  the  eye  of  a 
commercial-traveling  gentleman  fixed  upon  her  in  ad- 
miration, she  recovered  her  normal  balance.  Pshaw, 
what  was  the  matter  with  her?  She  wasn't  quite  in 
Aunt  Julia's  class  yet! 

"  No,  there  isn't  any  use  your  talking,  Jim.  I  don't 
want  to  marry  anybody  —  right  now  anyhow." 

Marvin  knew  her  well  enough  not  to  press  her,  and 
far  too  well  to  plead  that  she  would  be  the  salvation 
of  him,  whereas  without  her  he  would  head  straight 
for  the  dogs.  On  the  only  occasion  when  he  had  used 
that  lever  in  persuasion,  Nettie  had  foiled  him  with 
disconcerting  laughter,  not  hesitating,  furthermore, 
to  call  it  "  bunk  "  to  his  very  face.  Jim  liked  her 
none  the  less;  it  was  in  his  rogue's  temperament  to 
realize  that  she  was  right  about  the  "  bunk,"  and  to 
admire  her  for  a  sharpness  so  unusual  in  women. 

"  All  right,  kid,"  he  said  obediently.  "  I  won't  say 
anything  more  —  right  now.  You  know  about  me 
anyhow,"  and  beckoned  to  the  waiter  for  the  bill, 
pulling  out  a  roll  of  money  ostentatiously.  "  What's 
that  chicken-feed?"  he  inquired,  loftily  eyeing  the 
tray  of  loose  silver  when  the  man  came  back.  "  Keep 
it,  George,  keep  it,  it's  too  much  trouble  to  count !  " 
A  splendid  performance ;  for  some  reason  it  came  into 


272  THE  NOON-MARK 

Nettie's  head  that  Randon  McQuair  never  did  any- 
thing like  that ;  and  for  some  reason  she  gave  a  brief 
sigh. 

"How's  Millie?  And  how's  Mr.  Millie?"  Jim 
asked  her  facetiously ;  and  Nettie  had  to  smile  in  spite 
of  herself.  There  was  no  blinking  the  fact  that  to  the 
minds  of  most  people  Mrs.  Mildred  Aymar  Hands  was 
by  a  long  way  the  most  important  half  of  the  combi- 
nation, especially  since  she  had  come  into  prominence 
as  an  Altruist.  American  society  functions  against 
a  background  of  husbands,  so  that  there  was  nothing 
novel  about  the  spectacle  of  Elmer;  he  was  no  more 
unobtrusive  and  uncomplaining  than  myriads  of  his 
fellows.  It  was  only  that  cynical  scapegrace  of  a  Jim 
that  made  fun  of  him ;  but  Jim  dared  to  make  fun  of 
Millie,  too ;  he  did  not  even  stop  at  making  fun  of  the 
Altruistic  Brotherhood,  and  their  church  and  their 
high  priestess,  Mrs.  Nalia  Gruber  Evans  herself.  He 
was  wholly  unregenerate ;  and  so  potent  are  the  forces 
of  evil  that  the  Altruistics  invariably  came  off  second 
best  in  an  encounter  with  him.  Somehow  that  sacri- 
legious wit  of  his  found  unerringly  the  weak  joints  in 
their  armor.  Even  Millie  would  hesitate  and  stam- 
mer and  get  Negation  and  Error  into  an  inextricable 
tangle  under  Jim's  fire.  Some  expression  about  his 
shifty,  impenetrable  black  eyes,  his  loose-lipped  hum- 
orous mouth  confused  and  daunted  her;  perhaps  it 
was  a  subtle  suggestion  of  comradeship  in  knavery. 
He  seemed  to  know  her  through  and  through,  while 
she  did  not  and  could  not  know  him. 

"  Why,  they're  all  right,  I  guess,"  Nettie  told  him. 
"  Millie  led  the  meeting  or  the  services  or  whatever 
they  call  it  at  the  church  the  other  day." 

"  You  don't  say !     Millie's  coming  right  along,  isn't 


THE  NOON-MARK  273 

she?  But  where  was  Nalia?  " —  and  the  very  way  in 
which  Jim  brought  out  the  name  mysteriously  sur- 
rounded it  with  an  atmosphere  of  farce  — u  How  did 
she  like  taking  a  back  seat?  " 

"  I  believe  she  was  sick  or  something,  and  Millie 
took  her  place.  They  said  she  did  awfully  well.  I 
didn't  go ;  I  never  do.  I  haven't  got  any  use  for  'em, 
Those  old  Altruists,  I  mean." 

"  Same  here.  But  lots  of  people  have.  If  you 
want  to  make  a  living  in  this  country,  start  a  new 
religion.  It's  a  cinch !  You  can't  lose  out  on  it !  " 
said  Mr.  Marvin  with  conviction.  "  Only  everybody 
can't  do  it.  Me,  now.  I'd  be  a  failure,"  he  added  in 
jocular  regret.  "  Anyhow  I'd  rather  take  it  from  'em 
some  other  way.  And  besides  I  like  a  religion  that's 
run  on  the  good  old  hell-fire  principle.  There's  more 
to  it  somehow.  These  new  ones,  they  all  pass  up  hell, 
first  thing.  No,  your  Uncle  Ezra  would  be  a  fizzle; 
but  no  reason  why  Millie  shouldn't  make  good."  He 
was  silent  a  moment,  looking  off,  narrowing  those  un- 
reliable eyes  in  a  meditative  fashion  that  brought  out 
a  good  many  sinister  lines  grouped  at  the  corners  of 
them.  "  But  say,  what'll  she  do  with  Elmer?  If  she 
gets  to  going  pretty  strong  at  this  Leader  business, 
she  can't  have  Elmer  tagging  around." 

"  Goodness,  I  don't  know,"  said  Nettie  perturbed. 
"  I  never  thought  about  it.  Why,  Elmer  wouldn't 
make  any  difference,  would  he?  " 

"  Mighty  little,"  Jim  said  with  his  hard  grin.  "  My 
guess  is  she'll  let  him  go.     Too  bad !  " 

Mr.  Marvin's  income,  whatever  its  source,  appeared 
to  be  a  liberal  one  and  earned  without  conspicuous 
effort.  Except  for  sudden,  unheralded  absences  on 
"  business  "  which  lasted  anywhere  from  twenty-four 


274  THE  NOON-MARK 

hours  to  a  fortnight  or  longer,  Jim  seemed  to  be  pros- 
perously doing  nothing.  To  be  sure,  doing  nothing 
was  his  well-established  habit,  but  hitherto  it  had  not 
been  attended  by  evidences  of  prosperity  —  rather  the 
reverse.  Now  he  might  be  seen  any  day  at  his  favorite 
resorts,  garbed  in  the  latest  styles,  drinking  freely, 
hand  in  glove  with  numbers  of  other  sporting  gentle- 
men whose  means  of  gaining  a  livelihood  were  as 
obscure  as  his  own,  and  manifestly  not  so  successful. 
Once  in  a  while,  perhaps,  there  would  be  some  dashing 
petticoat  in  his  company;  James  was  no  Galahad. 
Undoubtedly  he  would  have  liked  his  orthodox  sweet- 
heart better;  but  if  she  would  be  cold,  why,  a  man's  a 
man  for  a'  that  Moreover,  the  places  and  ways  in 
which  he  could  entertain  Nettie  were  annoyingly  re- 
stricted; they  had  to  be  respectable,  and  they  were 
frequented  by  respectable  people  some  of  whom  Mr. 
Marvin  had  no  desire  to  meet.  For  instance,  he  did 
not  care  to  put  himself  in  the  way  of  Mr.  James  Pea- 
body.  "We  aren't  a  bit  popular  with  each  other," 
Jim  observed  sardonically.  Nor  was  he  popular  with 
the  officials  of  the  Travellers'  And  Traders',  with 
other  officials  in  certain  railroad  circles;  conservative 
business-men  who  had  never  laid  eyes  on  him  before, 
would  somehow  conceive  a  prejudice  against  him 
upon  the  shortest  acquaintance.  It  was  mutual ; 
their  disapproval  did  not  blight  the  spirit  of  this 
hardy  Ishmael ;  he  returned  it  and  avoided  coming  in 
contact  with  them. 

Nettie  Stieffel,  at  her  age,  after  ten  or  twelve  years 
of  direct  association  with  men  in  a  world  where  some 
conventions  and  some  artificialities  fell  automatically 
into  disuse,  was  under  no  illusions  about  this  lover's 
standing;  maybe  she  suspected  the  existence  of  those 


THE  NOON-MAKK  275 

flamboyant  ladies,  too,  but  without  hard  feeling. 
She  regarded  them  as  a  masculine  bad  habit  of  a 
piece  with  other  masculine  bad  habits  such  as  gam- 
bling and  getting  drunk.  It  was  a  decent  and  self- 
respecting  indifference,  unflavored  by  any  such  soft 
sentiment  as  charity ;  Nettie  thought,  perhaps  rightly, 
that  it  was  no  business  of  hers  how  the  men  behaved, 
except  as  regarded  their  behavior  towards  herself; 
and  for  the  women,  they  were  fools  and  therefore 
negligible. 

This  stark  character  and  woefully  unimaginative 
intelligence  prevented  her  from  divining  what  a  much 
duller  and  weaker  woman  would  have  known  by  in- 
stinct, namely :  that  she  herself  ought  not  to  risk 
being  seen  and  going  about  with  Marvin.  It  never 
came  into  Nettie's  head  that  a  scandalous  interpreta- 
tion might  be  put  upon  their  comradeship;  she  was 
too  upright,  too  self-reliant,  too  clean-minded.  She 
never  thought  ill  of  anybody,  why  should  anybody 
think  ill  of  her,  she  would  have  questioned  with 
supreme  simplicity.  Rochester  Avenue  knew  her  so 
well,  and  was  so  accustomed  to  pairing  her  with  Jim 
that  in  spite  of  a  word  or  two  of  gossip  here  and 
there,  no  one  dreamed  of  offering  advice  or  warning. 
Nettie  Stieffel  could  take  care  of  herself,  and  she 
wouldn't  thank  anybody  for  help  in  that  direction  was 
the  Avenue's  unvoiced  opinion.  Her  first  intimation 
of  what  might  be  going  on  in  other  peoples'  minds 
came  from  Mr.  Emil  Marklein,  junior,  who  on  a 
sudden  began  to  renew  attentions  which  had  never 
been  welcome,  and  were  now  invested  with  some  in- 
describable quality  that  made  them  more  unwelcome 
still.  He  was  at  once  bolder  and  slyer,  more  confi- 
dent and  more  insinuating.     Nettie  was  perplexed  and 


276  THE  NOON-MAEK 

disquieted  to  find  that  her  previous  forthright  tactics 
were  of  no  avail;  Emil  only  laughed  at  the  biting 
repartee  which  would  have  effectually  "  turned  him 
down  "  once  upon  a  time.  He  developed  a  way  of 
looking  at  her,  repellently  suggestive  of  secret  under- 
standing ;  his  knowing  smile  filled  her  with  an  ungen- 
teel  desire  to  dash  her  fist  into  the  middle  of  it  and 
spoil  a  tooth  or  so  for  him.  He  would  come  and  hang 
over  her  desk,  and  whisper  for  ten  minutes  at  a 
stretch,  and  no  amount  of  pretending  not  to  hear,  of 
deliberately  random  replies,  or  of  forbidding  silence 
discouraged  him. 

"  What  on  earth  has  started  him  again?  "  the  young 
woman  wondered  in  angry  bewilderment.  "  He  quit 
once,  why  can't  he  stay  quit?  "  Impossible  as  it  seems, 
she  never  guessed  what  it  was  that  had  started  Emil 
again,  not  even  when  he  would  bring  in  Marvin's 
name  as  he  did  sometimes  with  a  significance  which 
she  found  disagreeable  without  knowing  why.  She 
was  actually  too  irritated  to  speculate  about  the  mean- 
ing of  many  of  his  speeches;  a  great  part  of  the 
time  she  did  not  listen,  and  afterwards  could  not 
remember  them ;  there  remained  with  her  only  a  furi- 
ous repugnance  and  a  furious  purpose  to  "  get  even." 

On  a  day,  she  happened  to  be  alone  in  the  little 
anteroom  through  which  those  clients  of  the  bank 
who  had  business  with  the  vice-president  had  to  pass 
to  reach  his  private  office.  This  anteroom  Nettie  had 
come  to  regard  as  her  private  office;  there  she  sat, 
transcribing  from  her  notes,  onto  the  typewriter,  and 
anon  when  the  little  instrument  on  her  desk  buzzed 
a  signal,  she  would  rise  up  and  repair  to  old  Emil's 
presence  with  her  pencil  and  pad,  quick  yet  unhur- 
ried, reliable,  incomparably  efficient.     But  this  time 


THE  NOON-MARK  277 

she  was  peaceably  knitting  on  a  Red  Cross  sweater, 
having  got  through  the  letters  on  hand  and  knowing 
that  she  would  not  be  wanted  immediately;  it  was 
Tuesday  and  Mr.  Marklein  had  gone  to  directors' 
meeting.  The  younger  Emil  knew  that,  too,  without 
doubt ;  for  presently  in  he  walked.  Nettie  looked  up 
and  he  gave  her  that  abhorred  smile. 

"  Hello,  got  it  all  to  ourselves,  haven't  we?  Well, 
suits  me!  " 

Nettie  made  no  reply.  He  came  and  lounged  down 
into  a  chair  alongside  her  own.  "  Sulky,  as  usual,  I 
see,"  said  Emil  in  the  vein  of  elegant  banter  he  had 
lately  adopted.  "You  look  cute  when  you  get  that 
expression  on.  Is  that  the  reason,  or  would  your 
friend  raise  the  dickens  if  he  found  out  you  were  being 
nice  to  me,  once  in  a  while  ?  " 

"I  don't  know  what  you're  talking  about,"  said 
Nettie,  knitting  violently. 

"  No,  of  course  not.  Well,  never  mind,  don't  let's 
talk  about  him  anyway;  let's  talk  about  us.  Say, 
can't  you  stop  that  knitting  a  minute  — ?  " 

"  Take  your  hand  away !  " 

"  Oh  here  now,  what  you  afraid  of?  You  aren't 
afraid  of  me?  Why,  you  know  I  — "  He  finished  in 
a  lower  voice,  and  as  Nettie  started  to  her  feet,  re- 
newed his  hold,  drawing  her  down  to  him.  "  Come 
now,  you  know  you're  just  pretending.  Or  if  you're 
scared  of  Marvin — ?  W^hy,  what  he  don't  know 
won't  hurt  him  —  and  suppose  he  found  out,  you 
should  worry  about  him!  I'm  better  fixed  than  he  is 
any  day.  I'll  show  you  a  sure-enough  good  time. 
Just  say  what  you  want  —  oh,  come  now,  just 
once — ?"    Again  he  ended  in  a  whisper. 

He  felt  Nettie's  tense  muscles  suddenly  relax,  but 


278  THE  NOON-MARK 

not  in  acquiescence.  "  Somebody's  coming ! "  she 
said;  and  Emil,  conscious  that  there  were  more  chiv- 
alric  enterprises  for  a  gentleman  to  be  caught  in  than 
embracing  a  young  woman  who  was  trying  vigorously 
not  to  be  embraced,  hastily  got  himself  to  a  seemly 
distance. 

When  the  older  Marklein  entered  there  was  his  son 
rummaging  impotently  amongst  some  papers,  and 
there  was  his  stenographer  knitting  away  with  fierce 
and  rapid  motions  and  an  unusually  pallid  face 
which,  however,  he  did  not  remark.  Indeed,  he  be- 
stowed very  little  attention  on  either  one  of  them; 
Nettie  was  for  old  Emil  a  piece  of  valuable  office-furni- 
ture, and  as  to  Emil  junior,  Mr.  Marklein,  to  tell  the 
truth,  was  not  intimately  acquainted  with  the  young 
man.  What  with  school,  college,  trips  abroad  and  so 
on,  the  second  Emil  had  spent  most  of  his  life  away 
from  home.  Only  of  late  had  Mr.  Marklein  realized 
that  this  son,  whom  he  had  looked  upon  up  till  then 
as  a  boy,  was  thirty  years  old,  had  never  done  a  solid 
day's  work  in  all  the  thirty,  and  gave  no  slightest 
promise  of  bettering  that  record.  Old  Emil  who  had 
been  making  his  own  living  since  he  was  a  lad  of 
fifteen,  who  enjoyed  nothing  so  much  as  work,  and 
had  an  honest  man's  contempt  for  laziness  and  worth- 
lessness,  nevertheless  accepted  his  fate  philosophi- 
cally. He  had  done  his  best  for  Emil  —  and  Emil 
had  turned  out  no  good.  It  was  a  misfortune  for 
which  he  could  not  be  held  responsible.  Now  finding 
the  younger  man  in  the  office,  apparently  bent  on  try- 
ing to  do  something,  he  was  interested  enough  by  the 
phenomenon  to  give  him  some  directions  about  a 
letter. 


THE  NOON-MARK  279 

"  Miss  Nettie  can  take  it.  She  knows  who  the  peo- 
ple are  —  she  knows  all  about  it,"  he  said,  uncon- 
sciously betraying  a  reliance  on  Nettie  which  might 
have  gratified  her,  at  another  moment  and  he  passed 
on  into  the  rear  room. 

Nettie  silently  folded  up  the  knitting  and  addressed 
herself  to  taking  the  dictation,  with  a  stolid  eye  on 
her  companion.  He  would  not  dare  to  "start  any- 
thing "  again,  she  told  herself,  with  his  father  almost 
within  hearing  on  the  other  side  of  the  door;  he  was 
too  yellow!  She  had  not  been  afraid  of  him,  even 
when  alone  and  unsupported;  all  that  troubled  her 
was  the  recollection  of  how  near  she  had  come  to 
using  her  knitting-needles  —  within  an  ace !  She  did 
not  know  what,  in  the  ultimate  moment,  had  stayed 
her;  it  must  have  been  some  sub-conscious  recoil. 
Reviewed  in  composure  and  safety,  loathing  invaded 
her ;  it  would  have  been  a  horrid  expedient,  revolting 
and  stupid,  the  kind  of  thing  that  dago  women  re- 
sorted to,  Nettie  thought  in  final  condemnation. 
That  was  not  the  way  to  handle  him;  that  was  not 
the  way  to  settle  him ;  she  could  think  of  something 
better  than  that.  Emil  resumed  his  chair,  eyeing  her 
uncertainly. 

"Ready,  Mr.  Marklein?"  said  Nettie  smoothly, 
with  her  pencil  poised.  Her  hand  was  steady  — 
much  steadier  than  his !  He  got  through  the  letter, 
not  without  some  sentimental  interpolations,  though 
obliged  to  hold  himself  in  check,  as  Nettie  had  fore- 
seen; and  towards  the  end  some  of  the  other  clerks 
coming  in  unknowingly  released  her.  Still  in  a  com- 
posed, purposeful  fury  she  got  it  ready  for  the  mail, 
and  filed  a  duplicate;  and  later  on  started  home  at 


280  THE  NOON-MARK 

her  wonted  hour,  but  in  rather  unwonted  high  spirits. 
She  hummed  a  little  tune  as  she  pinned  on  her  hat 
in  front  of  the  toilet-room  mirror. 

"  Hello,  feeling  kind  of  good,  aren't  you?  "  queried 
an  office-mate  in  some  surprise. 

"  Oh,  I  was  just  thinking  of  something,"  said  Nettie 
gaily. 

For  the  next  three  or  four  days  she  managed  to 
elude  Emil  junior  by  various  petty  feminine  tricks 
which  in  themselves  she  thoroughly  despised.  But 
the  end  justified  every  device,  and  the  end,  as  Nettie 
was  aware,  would  not  be  long  in  coming.  "  I  suppose 
I'm  cutting  off  my  nose  to  spite  my  face,"  she  once  or 
twice  reflected  grimly,  and  told  herself  that  she  did 
not  care.  She  had  to  do  something;  she  couldn't 
have  that  happen  again!  She  knew  that  she  had 
acted  on  impulse,  but  even  thinking  it  over  in  cold 
blood,  no  measure  more  likely  to  be  effective  occurred 
to  her. 

The  end  coincided  with  the  arrival  of  the  manager 
of  the  Eagleville  Glass  Company,  long-time  customers 
of  the  bank,  from  his  up-state  town,  in  an  inquiring 
and  somewhat  irritated  mood.  Mr.  Marklein  was 
busy  at  the  moment  with  Mr.  Halpin  of  the  Credit- 
and-Loan  department,  notwithstanding  which  the 
gentleman  from  Eagleville  insisted  on  seeing  him  at 
once.  "  I  came  down  on  other  business,  but  while 
I'm  here  I  thought  I  might  as  well  call  in  and  have 
a  matter  explained,"  he  said  severely.  "  Your  credit- 
and-loan  man  will  be  just  as  much  interested  as  Mr. 
Marklein.  I  haven't  much  time,  Miss  —  er  —  if 
you'll  kindly  tell  him  — ?  " 

Nettie  was  not  at  all  surprised ;  for  all  its  menace 
of  disaster  to  herself,  she  took  a  kind  of  frosty  pleas- 


THE  NOON-MARK  281 

ure  in  the  situation.  After  due  negotiations  she  ush- 
ered Mr.  Jaycox  into  the  vice-presidential  room ;  young 
Emil  happened  to  be  there,  too  —  a  stroke  of  luck, 
Nettie  thought,  savagely  jubilant.  But,  closing  the 
door,  as  she  heard  the  tone  in  which  the  glass-com- 
pany's manager  began :  "  Mr.  Marklein,  I  don't  want 
to  make  a  fuss  about  a  trifle  —  no  doubt  there's  been 
some  mistake  made  —  or  if  it's  a  joke  perhaps  you'll 
allow  me  to  say  that  I  don't  see  the  point  — "  Nettie 
had  a  flash  of  compunction. 

"  Oh  my,  I  hope  he  isn't  so  mad  he'll  want  to  take 
his  account  away !  "  she  ejaculated  inwardly.  In- 
deed, she  was  loyalty  itself,  and  had  had  no  design  of 
making  trouble  for  anybody  except  one  young  man 
who  amply  deserved  it ;  the  fact  that  she  herself  in  all 
likelihood,  must  suffer  incidentally  was  dwarfed  to 
unimportance  by  the  thorough  satisfaction  of  her  re- 
venge. 

A  sustained  rumbling  on  the  other  side  of  the  par- 
tition could  presently  be  identified  as  the  voice  of 
Mr.  Jaycox  reading  aloud;  there  was  an  outburst  of 
interrogation  or  expostulation  from  the  other  gentle- 
men all  together;  then  a  silence;  then  a  species  of 
dropping  fire  of  remarks  from  everybody  all  around 
the  room ;  then  the  announcer  on  Nettie's  desk  set  up 
its  strident  call. 

She  went  in  and  stood  before  them  tall  and  steady 
and  quietly  expectant,  as  usual.  Emil  was  sitting 
flushed,  sullen  and  sheepish,  in  an  ostentatiously 
negligent  posture,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets  and 
his  legs  crossed,  swinging  one  foot  and  kicking  at  the 
table-leg.  Mr.  Halpin  looked  as  if  he  were  doing  his 
best  not  to  laugh ;  a  puzzled  appreciation  of  something 
humorous  in  the  scene  was  beginning  to  show  on  the 


282  THE  NOON-MAKK 

managerial  countenance  of  Mr.  Jaycox,  erstwhile  so 
lowering;  only  old  Eniil,  harsh,  heavy  and  serious, 
with  every  faculty  concentrated  on  the  matter  in  hand 
to  the  absolute  exclusion  of  aught  else,  remained  like 
Nettie  herself,  perfectly  natural.  He  held  out  a  piece 
of  typewritten  paper  to  her. 

"  Miss  Stieffel,  I  wish  you'd  look  this  over  and  tell 
me  if  you  know  anything  about  it." 

Nettie  took  the  sheet  which  bore  the  bank's  letter- 
head and  the  date  she  expected  to  see,  and  read  aloud : 

" '  Albert  I.  Jaycox,  Esq. 

Dear  Sir: 

Yours  of  1th.  received.  In  reply  would  state  you 
have  the  prettiest  hair  I  ever  saw  — ' f> 

"  Why  yes,  Mr.  Marklein.     I  wrote  this." 

Halpin  coughed;  Mr.  Jaycox,  as  it  happened,  was 
quite  bald.  He  gave  a  sort  of  unwilling  smile;  and 
both  of  them  glanced,  perhaps  without  meaning  to,  at 
the  heavy  folds  of  Nettie's  rust-colored  hair;  and 
from  her  to  the  younger  Emil  with  his  angry,  foolish 
face;  and  at  each  other.  There  was  a  second  of 
silence. 

"  Mr.  Emil  Marklein  dictated  it,"  said  Nettie  delib- 
erately and  distinctly.  "  I  took  down  everything  he 
said.     The  copy's  in  the  file  — " 

"  That's  all.     You  can  go,"  said  old  Emil. 


XIX 

AFTERWARDS  it  was  reported  amongst  the 
clerical  small-fry  at  the  bank  that  Mr.  Mark- 
lein  senior  said  it  seemed  to  him  he  was  get- 
ting a  rather  raw  deal  inasmuch  as  he  couldn't  dis- 
charge his  son  for  being  a  damn  fool,  and  he  had  to 
discharge  the  young  woman  for  not  being  one !  But 
the  probabilities  are  that  old  Emil  never  said  any- 
thing of  the  kind;  he  was  neither  so  expansive,  nor 
so  epigrammatically  gifted.  Nettie,  having  success- 
fully accomplished  the  feat  of  cutting  off  her  nose  to 
spite  her  face,  went  home  still  stubbornly  maintaining 
to  herself  that  she  did  not  care.  She  could  get  an- 
other job,  she  had  money  saved  up  and  could  afford  to 
wait,  to  take  her  choice  and  get  something  good.  The 
folks  might  make  all  the  outcry  they  pleased ;  indeed 
she  herself  was  sorry;  but  let  them  say  what  they 
would  have  done  in  her  place !  Even  supposing  there 
had  been  a  man  in  the  family  to  whom  she  might  have 
gone,  he  could  have  done  nothing  to  young  Marklein 
on  account  of  the  publicity;  if  anything  got  into  the 
papers —  !  But  there  was  nobody,  she  had  to  look 
out  for  herself  "  Pop'll  say  I  did  right,  anyhow,"  she 
thought  with  a  singular  feeling  of  comfort  —  singular, 
that  is,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  it  had  been  years 
since  she  or  any  other  member  of  the  household,  even 
the  youngest,  had  relied  on  Frank  for  moral  support, 
gone  to  him  for  advice,  trusted  his  judgment  or  asked 
his  opinion.  The  invalid  was  islanded  among  the  var- 
ious currents  of  their  lives,  like  a  stone  in  mid-stream ; 

283 


284  THE  NOON-MARK 

their  very  kindnesses  isolated  him.  But  now  Nettie 
fell  back  confidently  on  his  understanding,  not  aware 
of  inconsistency.  Anyhow,  she  thought  with  finality, 
what  was  done,  was  done;  no  use  worrying  over  it. 
None  the  less,  it  was  a  hateful  piece  of  news  to  carry 
home  —  hateful  and  humiliating.  They  would  have 
it  all  over  the  neighborhood  in  no  time  that  Nettie 
Stieff  el  had  been  fired ;  she  would  never  have  believed 
that  day  would  come!  There  would  always  be  some 
to  doubt  the  explanation,  too.  The  people  were  good, 
they  were  her  friends ;  come  to  the  pinch,  they  would 
stand  up  for  her,  defend  her  tooth  and  nail;  but  in 
the  meanwhile  —  "Everybody  does  love  to  talk ! " 
Nettie  thought  pessimistically;  "and  there're  lots  of 
'em  that  think  it  shows  how  sharp  they  are  not  to 
believe  anything." 

A  doctor's  little  runabout  with  the  green  cross  on 
the  front  of  the  radiator-hood  was  backing  and  turn- 
ing before  the  house,  and  dashed  off  at  a  brisk  gait 
just  as  she  reached  it.  Mrs.  Weaver  was  out  on  her 
porch  and  Nettie's  mother  came  flying  down  the  steps 
with  a  face  full  of  eagerness  and  importance  and 
animation. 

"Nettie!  How'd  you  happen  to  get  home  just  at 
this  minute?  Ain't  you  early?  Have  you  heard? 
You  can*t  have  heard?  " 

"  No,  I'm  not  early  —  it's  nearly  six.  Heard  what? 
I  haven't  heard  anything  — "  Nettie  was  answering, 
startled,  when  Mrs.  Stieffel  stopped  her  with  an  ener- 
getic gesture. 

"  Ssh !  If  she  sh'd  hear  us,  she'd  suspicion  some- 
thing right  off.  Ssh!  They  get  so  suspicious  you 
know  — " 

Mrs.  Weaver  ran  across,  visibly  agog  with  curiosity 


THE  NOON-MARK  285 

and  sympathetic  excitement.     "  What'd  lie  say?  "  she 
asked.     "  He  didn't  say  it  was  hopeless,  did  he?  " 

"  No,  not  in  so  many  words  —  but  you  know  how 
doctors  are.  They  seldom  ever  tell  you  the  real  truth. 
They  don't  want  to  depress  you,"  said  Mrs.  Stieffel 
—  who,  however,  was  not  markedly  depressed.  "  Oh 
my,  Mis'  Weaver,  it's  awful !  "  she  said  with  emotional 
relish  — "  just   awful !  " 

"  What's  the  matter?     Is  it  Pop?  "  said  Nettie. 

"  Ssh !  " 

Nettie's  nerves,  sorely  tried  lately,  gave  way  for 
one  instant.  "  For  Heaven's  sake,  what's  hap- 
pened?"  she  demanded  roughly,  and  grasped  her 
mother's  arm  and  shook  it.  "  Don't  stand  there 
'ssh-ing'  me.  What's  happened?  Who's  sick? 
Who's  dead?  Or  are  they  only  hurt?  What's  hap- 
pened?   Can't  you  answer?  " 

"Why,  Net,  you  act  like  you're  all  wrought  up," 
said  Maggie  soothingly  yet  with  reproof,  glancing  at 
Mrs.  Weaver  in  apology.  "  I  thought  you  must  have 
had  a  feeling,  one  of  those  premonitions-like,  that 
something  was  wrong  at  home  when  I  saw  you  com- 
ing.    You  look  so  kind  of  down  — " 

Nettie  made  a  movement  to  push  past  her  into  the 
house,  but  her  mother  held  her  back.  "  Ssh !  Don't 
go  in  so  sudden  — " 

Nettie  commanded  herself  with  a  strong  effort. 
"  Anybody  might  die  while  you're  talking.  I  haven't 
had  any  premonitions,  I  didn't  know  anything  was 
the  matter,  I  wasn't  dreaming  of  it.  I  just  came 
home  like  I  always  do.  Now  will  you  tell  me,  or  let 
me  go  and  find  out  for  myself?  "  she  said  as  gently 
as  she  was  able ;  yet  Maggie  shrank  a  little. 

"  Well,  it  seemed  funny  for  you  to  come  back  just 


286  THE  NOON-MARK 

when  you  did.  If  you'd  got  here  only  one  minute 
sooner,  you'd  have  run  right  into  the  doctor — " 

"  It's  your  Aunt  Julia,  Nettie.  She  was  took  sick 
sudden,"  said  Mrs.  Weaver  bluntly,  overcoming  a 
polite  reluctance  to  interfere.  "  Your  ma's  just  try- 
ing to  break  it  to  you  easy.  I  know  it  ain't  my  place 
to  stick  in  and  tell  you,  only  — " 

"  Aunt  Julia?     How  sick?    What  way  sick?  " 

"Ssh!" 

"  What'd  the  doctor  say  was  the  matter,  Mis' 
Stieffel?" 

Helen  ran  out.  "  Say,  she's  been  asking  me  if 
Doctor  White  said  anything  to  you  separate  any  dif- 
ferent from  what  he  told  her!"  she  announced  im- 
portantly. "  I  didn't  know  what  to  say.  Hello,  Net, 
you  back?  " 

All  that  Nettie  could  gather  was  that  her  aunt  had 
complained  of  pain  once  or  twice  during  the  morning, 
and  then  after  dinner  collapsed  suddenly  as  she  was 
helping  with  the  dishes,  and  had  to  be  put  to  bed. 
They  had  not  thought  of  having  the  doctor  immediate- 
ly; she  kept  saying  she  would  feel  better  pretty  soon. 
But  at  last  they  got  frightened  and  Helen  went  up  to 
the  drug-store  and  telephoned.  He  did  not  get  there 
for  quite  a  while ;  he  said  something  about  a  consulta- 
tion— "  He  says  to  me,  '  Mis'  Stieffel,'  he  says,  '  Your 
sister's  a  very  sick  woman,'  he  says  — " 

Nettie  left  them  talking.  A  glance  into  the  kitchen 
revealed  the  dishes  still  unwashed.  Her  father  was 
dozing  in  his  chair.  There  was  a  simmer  of  flies ;  the 
lower  panel  of  the  screen-door  had  scuffed  out  long 
ago,  the  raw  rusted  edges  of  the  wire  cloth  curling 
back,  catching  and  tearing  everybody's  skirts;  Nettie 


THE  NOON-MARK  287 

could  not  count  the  times  she  had  told  them  to  have  it 
mended.  She  remembered  it  anew  with  an  impatience 
which  she  checked  in  a  shock  of  remorseful  apprehen- 
sion. This  was  no  moment  to  be  finding  fault  about 
screen-doors.     She  went  on  upstairs  to  the  sick-room. 

Julia  had  been  sewing,  of  course,  and  the  floor  was 
littered  with  her  scraps ;  in  the  midst  of  them  the  ma- 
chine stood  open  and  idle,  the  needle  arrested  in  the 
seam  as  if  by  a  spell.  The  unnatural  spectacle  was 
eloquent  of  disaster.  There  were  clothes  scattered 
everywhere,  Julia's  frowzy  skirts,  her  poor,  broken  old 
corsets.  It  was  gloomy  and  close  in  the  little  room 
where  among  other  attentions  which  were  no  doubt  as 
futile,  Mrs.  Stieffel  had  painstakingly  pulled  down 
all  the  curtains  except  that  at  the  west  window 
through  which  a  ray  of  sunlight  slanted  mercilessly 
into  the  sick  woman's  face.  She  lay  high  on  the 
untidy  pillows  with  her  eyes  closed,  but  as  Nettie  saw 
with  an  inward  bound  of  relief,  breathing  easily  as  if 
she  were  in  no  present  suffering,  at  any  rate;  there 
was  no  dreadful  change  upon  her  features.  She 
opened  her  eyes,  and  spoke  a  little  shrilly  and  feebly, 
but  in  her  natural  manner. 

"Is  that  you,  Net?" 

"  Sure  it's  me !  "  said  Nettie,  adopting  that  style  of 
false  gaiety  with  which  we  are  all  painfully  familiar. 
"  What  you  mean  by  scaring  all  of  us  this  way?  " 

"  Well,  I  just  seem  to  kind  of  play  out  all  at  once," 
said  Julia  with  a  certain  surprise.  "  Generally,  you 
know,  I'm  pretty  good  at  standing  pain.  I've  never 
been  the  kind  to  bawl  and  whoop  and  go  running  to 
the  doctor  for  every  little  thing.  But  this  was  one 
too  many  for  me.     What'd  that  doctor  say?  " 


288  THE  NOON-MAKK 

"  I  don't  know.  I  didn't  get  here  in  time  to  see 
him,"  said  Nettie,  privately  giving  thanks.  "  Is  it 
hurting  you  now,  Aunt  Jule?" 

"  No.  Not  so  bad  as  it  was,  that  is.  I  can  stand  a 
pretty  good  stiff  pain,  you  know,"  Julia  reiterated. 
"  This  just  got  the  better  of  me  for  a  minute.  I've 
had  it  before,  and  it  always  passed  off  after  a  while 
—  but  not  this  time."  She  paused  a  moment,  then 
added :  "  I  guess  I'll  be  all  right  in  the  morning." 

Nettie,  to  her  horror,  felt  her  chin  quivering  un- 
controllably, the  tears  smarting  in  her  eyes.  To 
avoid  detection,  she  busied  herself  desperately 
straightening  up  the  place,  finding  some  outlet  for 
her  emotion  in  gruff  and  acid  comment.  "  It's  a  won- 
der somebody  couldn't  have  put  a  few  of  these  things 
away  and  picked  up  around  here  so's  it  would  be  a 
little  more  decent  for  you  to  look  at.  I  do  think  to 
be  sick  and  have  everything  all  higgle-piggledy  — ! 
Is  that  light  in  your  eyes  now?  How's  that?  I  don't 
see  why  they  had  to  fix  the  curtain  that  way — " 

"  Never  mind.  They  didn't  think  about  it.  It 
don't  make  any  difference,"  said  her  aunt. 

Mrs.  Stieffel  tiptoed  upstairs,  coughed  significantly 
on  the  landing,  and  as  these  signals  went  unnoticed 
by  her  daughter,  at  last  resorted  to  a  pregnant  whis- 
per. "Nettie!  Ssh!  Say,  Nettie! "  She  beckoned 
and  maneuvered  elaborately. 

Nettie  saw  her  with  a  gust  of  impatience  that  drove 
back  her  tears.  "  Oh,  come  on  in,  Ma!  What  you 
hanging  round  out  there  for?  "  she  challenged  not 
too  gently.  But  she  went  to  the  door  as  the  other 
continued  to  nod  and  mouth  inarticulately.  "  What 
is  it  now?  I'm  just  trying  to  clean  up  some  of  the 
muss  — " 


THE  NOON-MARK  289 

"Ssh! "  Her  mother  seized  her  and  drew  her  out- 
side. "  You  oughtn't  to  get  her  excited,  you  don't 
re'lize  how  sick  she  is.  There  oughtn't  to  be  anything 
going  on  in  the  room,  and  no  running  in  and  out,  nor 
noise  nor  nothing.  The  doctor  said  not !  "  she  whis- 
pered violently.  "  Say,  he  left  a  p'scription,  but 
Helen  don't  know  what  she  done  with  it.  She  says 
she  remembers  laying  it  down  somewheres,  and  she 
can't  remember  where  it  was,  only  she  says  it  was  in 
the  room,  she's  positive.  Say,  you  look  if  you  can 
find  it,  will  you  —  Ssh!  Don't  let  on  it's  lost  to  your 
Aunt  Julia  —  !" 

"  She  put  it  down  on  the  chair,  just  before  she  run 
out.  Ain't  it  there,  Nettie?  "  said  Julia  in  her  weak 
voice.     "  What'd  the  doctor  tell  you,  Maggie?  " 

Mrs.  Stieffel,  taken  aback,  babbled  confusedly. 
"  Nothing  —  he  didn't  say  —  he  said  — "  Nettie,  in 
a  dumb  fury,  sought  the  prescription  and  presently 
found  it  among  some  rags  on  the  chair  which  they 
were  using  in  lieu  of  a  table ;  a  tumbler  of  water  had 
been  overturned  on  the  seat  by  someone's  unguarded 
movement;  Mrs.  Stiegel  gave  an  exclamation  of  dis- 
may at  the  sight. 

"  Oh  my  goodness,  it's  all  run  and  washed  out ! 
Well,  if  that  ain't  — !  What '11  we  do?  Can  you  tell 
what's  on  it,  Net?  I  ain't  got  my  glasses,  and  I  never 
could  make  out  a  p'scription  anyhow  —  Well,  there's 
one  thing,  he  said  it  wasn't  anything  but  something  to 
keep  the  pain  down  so's  she  could  sleep.  He  said 
there  wasn't  anything  really  he  could  give  her  that 
would  do  any  good  —  Ok!  "  She  clapped  her  hand  to 
her  mouth,  stricken  with  a  sudden  realization  of  con- 
fidence betraved.  Fortunatelv  at  that  moment  Helen 
came  running  up  the  steps,  and  her  mother  attacked 


L>90  THE  NOON-MARK 

her  by  way  of  creating  a  diversion.  "  Just  look  what 
you  done !  I  sh'd  think  you'd  have  more  feeling,  with 
your  own  aunt  that's  always  been  just  as  good  as 
gold  to  you  lying  there  sick  like  she  is  — " 

"  Good-night,  Ma,  I  haven't  done  anything  to  her ! 
You  got  the  prescription?  Here,  lemme — I"  cried 
out  Helen  sharply,  and  twitched  the  paper  from  her 
hand.  "  It's  not  wet,  just  one  little  corner.  You  can 
see  it  just  calls  for  some  kind  of  tablets.  They'll 
know  what  they  are  at  Roudebush's."  She  clattered 
down  again.  "  Hoo-hoo !  Wait,  Min !  I'll  go  up  to 
the  corner  with  you !  "  They  heard  her  hailing  a 
comrade  at  the  top  of  her  healthy  young  lungs. 

Mrs.  Stieffel's  official  cares  returned.  "  There  now, 
Just  listen  at  that  racket !  And  Helen  heard  Doctor 
White  say  'specially  Aunt  Julia  hadn't  ought  to  be 
disturbed.  Some  people  are  just  naturally  inconsid- 
erate. How  you  feeling,  Julia?  Did  Helen  disturb 
you?" 

"  Helen's  all  right,  don't  scold  her,  Maggie.  I  like 
to  hear  the  young  thing;  it  sounds  kinda  well  and 
happy,"  said  Julia. 

Nettie  looked  at  her  mother  helplessly.  "  I'll  tell 
you  what  you  do,  Ma,  you  go  and  get  some  clean  pil- 
low-slips, and  I'll  get  out  one  of  my  nightgowns  and 
then  I'll  get  some  hot  water  and  wash  her  hands  and 
face  and  comb  her  hair  out  and  braid  it,  and  we'll  fix 
her  up  all  nice  and  comfortable,"  she  suggested. 
"  Let's !     Come  on !  " 

"  Ssh!  You  do  bustle  around  so,  Nettie,  and  the 
doctor  said  she'd  ought  not  to  be  disturbed  — " 

"  It's  all  right,  Maggie,"  Julia  interposed,  turning 
her  head  with  a  cautious  effort,  distressing  to  wit- 
ness.    "  Only  don't  let  Net  tire  herself  out  waiting  on 


THE  NOON-MARK  291 

me.     She's  bad  a  good  day's  work  at  the  bank  already. 
It  ain't  any  easy  job  she's  got." 

Alas,  the  bank !  And  alas,  her  job !  In  the  stress 
of  unforeseen  calamity,  Nettie  had  forgotten  the  bank, 
and  the  job  which  would  be  hers  only  until  her  month 
was  up.  For  once  in  her  life,  courage  failed  her;  she 
would  not  tell  them  now,  at  any  rate. 

Mrs.  Weaver  came  over  and  offered  to  sit  up  part 
of  the  night.  "  And  he  says  if  he  can  be  of  any  as- 
sistance, just  let  him  know,"  she  said,  meaning  Mr. 
Weaver.  "  He  feels  a  kinda  delicacy  about  coming 
round  himself,  even  to  inquire.  People  might  think 
something,  and  you  know  it  ain't  that  at  all.  That's 
all  I  got  against  the  business;  it's  a  mean  business 
that  way.  But  he  says  he's  awful  sorry,  and  to  give 
Miss  Julia  his  best  regards  and  tell  her  we're  all 
looking  to  see  her  around  again  in  no  time,  as  spry 
as  a  kitten.  Everybody's  got  to  be  sick  once  in  a 
while,  ain't  it  so?  " 

Nettie  thanked  her,  but  asserted  herself  to  be  per- 
fectly capable  of  taking  charge  of  the  sick  woman. 
In  fact,  she  was,  though  without  any  feminine  turn 
for  nursing;  she  disliked  the  personal  care  of  some- 
one else  as  much  as  she  would  have  disliked  another's 
personal  care  of  herself.  She  was  not  perhaps  very 
humane;  but  common  sense  and  a  real  and  strong 
affection  achieved  humanity.  The  physical  attentions 
she  accomplished  as  well  as  any  trained  nurse ;  Nettie 
did  not  need  to  be  taught  cleanliness,  thoroughness, 
vigilance;  it  was  the  ingenious,  kindly  hypocrisies  of 
the  sick-room  that  taxed  her  most. 

However,  that  was  not  for  long.  Poor  Julia  was 
not  all  right  in  the  morning;  she  was  so  far  from 
all  right  that  Nettie,  after  doing  what  she  could  and 


292  THE  NOON-MARK 

leaving  injunctions  about  the  care  and  comfort  of  the 
sick  woman  in  a  dreary  certainty  that  not  one  of 
them  would  be  followed  or  even  remembered,  tele- 
phoned the  doctor  as  she  went  down  town.  What  he 
said  was  not  encouraging;  she  worked  all  day  op- 
pressed by  it.  And  in  the  evening,  coming  home,  Mrs. 
Stieffel  met  her  with  a  countenance  of  important 
gravity. 

"  She'll  have  to  have  an  operation/'  she  announced 
with  a  species  of  solemn  relish.  "  They're  all  coming 
over  after  supper." 

"They?    Who?" 

"  Why,  Millie  and  Elmer  and  Reverend  Stegemiller 
and  everybody  — " 

"  For  Heaven's  sake,  what  do  they  want  to  come 
for?  " 

"Why,  Nettie!  They  want  to  see  her  before,  and 
say  good-bye.     Something  might  happen,  you  know." 

"  They  don't  need  to  act  as  if  it  was  a  wake," 
snapped  Nettie,  miserably.  "  You  don't  want  her  to 
get  to  thinking  that  something  may  happen.  Every- 
body coming  this  way,  all  of  a  sudden  —  Millie  hasn't 
been  here  for  weeks.     It'll  look  like  —  like — " 

"  Oh,  she's  p'pared.  Doctor  White,  he  p'pared 
her" 

"  Nobody's  ever  prepared  for  a  thing  like  that," 
said  Nettie,  again  in  an  impotent  rage.  "  But  what's 
the  use  — ?  "  What  was  the  use,  sure  enough?  She 
felt  as  if  she  were  dashing  herself  against  a  stone  wall. 

She  found  her  aunt  a  shade  grayer,  a  shade  weaker 
than  the  day  before  perhaps;  and  perhaps  the  room, 
owing  to  her  own  energetic  ministrations,  was  a  shade 
less  disordered.  "You  heard,  Net?  They  told 
you?  " 


THE  NOON-MARK  293 

"Yes.  Goodness,  everybody's  got  to  be  operated 
on  for  something  or  other  nowadays !  You're  right  in 
style,  Aunt  Ju!  "  Nettie  assured  her  gallantly. 

"  I  gotta  go  to  the  hospital,  did  you  know?  ' 

"  Well,  I  thought  likely  you  would.  It  sounds  sort 
of  terrible,  but  really  and  truly  you'll  be  a  whole  lot 
more  comfortable  and  looked  after  better  than  you 
are  here.     How  long  did  he  say  it  would  be?  ' 

"  Three  weeks,  I  b'lieve  —  if  —  if  I  come  out  all 
right,  you  know,  Nettie." 

"  Oh,  you're  going  to  come  out  all  right,  Aunt 
Julia.  Don't  you  let  'em  scare  you  —  not  that  old 
Doctor  White  nor  anybody.  Why,  look  how  strong 
you  are!  You've  got  a  grand  constitution.  It  isn't 
as  if  you  were  some  poor,  broken-down  thing  that'd 
been  sickly  all  her  life." 

Julia  was  silent,  moving  her  fingers  nervously  on 
the  counterpane.  "  He  says  I've  had  it  a  good  while," 
she  said  at  length.  "  He  says  it  ought  to  have  been 
taken  out  long  ago,  wThen  it  first  began  to  give  me 
trouble.  But  I  didn't  know  what  was  the  matter  — 
just  that  something  hurt.  I  —  I  thought  it  would 
get  well  of  itself  —  or  —  or  — "  She  broke  off,  turn- 
ing tragic  eyes  to  the  other.  "  Nettie,  it'll  cost  five 
hundred  dollars.  That's  the  cheapest  they'll  do  it 
for." 

"  Yeah,  I  know  those  things  cost,"  Nettie  said  with 
resolute  cheerfulness.  "  But  it's  better  spent  that 
way  than  any  other.  You  don't  have  to  scrape  and 
save  so  hard,  Aunt  Julia,  anyhow;  we'll  always  take 
care  of  you.  And  we'd  rather  have  you  well,  and 
you'd  rather  be  well  than  have  all  the  money  on 
earth." 

Julia's  face  contracted;  appalled,  Nettie  saw  her 


294  THE  NOON-MARK 

slow,  hard-coming  tears  welling  up,  running  over. 

"  Don't,  Aunt  Ju,  don't,  you're  going  to  be  all  right. 
You're  going  to  get  well  — " 

"  It  ain't  that,  Nettie  —  I  ain't  thinking  of  that. 
It>s  — oh,  Nettie,  I  ain't  got  all  that  money.  I  did 
have  it,  but  I  —  I  —  it's  gone,  a  lot  of  it  — " 

Nettie  experienced  a  definite  shock ;  she  knew  with- 
in a  few  dollars  the  extent  of  her  aunt's  exchequer  a 
few  months  earlier;  it  was  inconceivable  that  Julia 
could  have  gotten  through  it,  undiscovered;  the  first 
thought  that  visited  the  younger  woman  was  that  the 
other's  mind  had  broken  down  under  this  misfortune. 
"Oh,  shoo!  You've  just  added  up  wrong,  Aunt 
Julia,"  she  suggested  in  a  tranquilizing  tone.  "  You 
know  you  aren't  the  best  ever  at  figures.  Let  me  get 
your  savings-bank  book  and  find  where  the  mistake 

is." 

"  There  ain't  any  mistake,  Nettie.     I  —  I  spent  it 

—  all  but  the  last  hundred — "  sobbed  poor  old 
Julia.     "  I  spent  it  doctoring  — " 

"  Doctoring?     But  you  said  — ?  " 

"  I  know.     Well,  it  wasn't  exactly  doctoring  either 

—  but  it  was  for  this  same  trouble.  I  spent  it  with 
that  Mrs.  Evans  — "  and  seeing  the  blankness  of  Net- 
tie's face,  she  explained :  "  Mrs.  Nalia  Gruber  Evans, 
that  Altruistic  Leader,  you  know." 

There  was  a  silence  while  Nettie  vainly  strove  to 
assimilate  this  information.  "Why,  you  couldn't! 
She  isn't  a  doctor,"  she  got  out  at  last. 

"No,  I  know.  She  don't  claim  to  be.  But  I 
thought  maybe  that  prayer  and  instruction  she  gives 

—  I  thought  maybe  if  I  had  faith  and  forgot  Error 
the  way  she  said  you'd  ought  —  I  thought  maybe  I'd 
get  well  —  what'd  you  say?  " 


THE  NOON-MARK  295 

Nettie  had  made  a  movement  and  a  sound;  she 
controlled  both,  choking  back  wrathful  and  indignant 
words.  "  Nothing,  I  didn't  say  anything.  I  suppose 
she  charged  you.  That's  where  your  money  went?  " 
she  asked,  trying  not  to  be  harsh. 

"  Yes.  I  bought  her  book  too.  That  book  the  Al- 
truists have,  you  know  — " 

"  I  thought  they  didn't  have  anything  but  the 
Bible." 

"  Yes,  they  got  that,  too.  But  there's  a  book  be- 
sides. It  was  eight  dollars.  She  said  I'd  oughta 
have  it  to  study  out  of  and  stren'then  my  faith.  I 
tried  hard.  But  it  didn't  get  any  better  —  and  then 
my  money  got  down  —  and  then  this  come  on  —  and 
I  ain't  got  but  that  hundred  left !  "  The  tears  rolled 
down.     "  I  guess  you  think  I'm  an  awful  fool,  Nettie." 

"  Don't  you,  for  one  minute,  Aunt  Julia,"  said  Net- 
tie, rallying  her  forces,  patting  the  other's  hand.  "  I 
think  you're  all  right!  Suppose  you  have  only  got  a 
hundred,  /  have  some.  I  got  plenty.  Now,  you  quit ! 
Don't  you  dare  to  worry  another  minute !  " 

"  But  I  don't  want  to  take  your  money  —  I  — " 

"  You  quit  now !  "  She  was  gratified  to  see  her 
aunt  calming  down ;  possibly  Julia's  weakened  condi- 
tion accounted  in  part  for  the  readiness  of  her  ac- 
quiescence. 

"  You're  mighty  good,  Nettie,"  she  said  humbly. 
And  with  a  pathetic  glimmer  of  her  ancient  spirit : 
"  I  won't  do  anything  as  tom-fool  as  that  again,  you 
see ! " 

Alone,  Nettie  sat  down  and  surveyed  her  estate  of 
joblessness,  and  imminent  moneylessness  with  a  pang 
of  terror  for  the  future.  She  would  have  to  tell  the 
family  now;  all  together  they  must  raise  the  money 


296  THE  NOON-MARK 

to  get  Aunt  Julia  through  the  operation.  Nettie  her- 
self had  not  enough  laid  by,  and  presently  she  might 
not  be  making  any.  All  at  once  she  was  not  so  cock- 
sure and  confident  about  picking  out  the  best  posi- 
tion ;  she  began  to  feel  that  she  would  take  anything, 
no  matter  what.  She  must  start  in  at  once,  put  an 
advertisement  in  the  papers,  look  around,  ask  all  her 
friends  to  look  around.  She  had  had  an  idea  that 
when  it  was  bruited  about  that  Nettie  Stieffel  was 
—  ahem !  —  was  contemplating  a  change,  the  in- 
quiries and  offers  would  pour  in.  Now  that  radiant 
prospect  was  beclouded,  blotted  out  with  doubts. 
It  was  not  made  so  easy  as  all  that  for  anyone ;  you 
got  nothing  without  going  after  it  —  and  even  then 
you  sometimes  got  precious  little,  as  Jim  said  with 
his  foxy  humor.  She  comforted  herself  as  best  she 
might  with  the  knowledge  that  there  was  always 
some  demand  for  good  stenographers,  that  she  was  as 
good  as  any  in  the  city,  and  that  a  number  of  business- 
men knew  it. 

"  And  he  says  to  me,  he  says :  '  Mis'  Stieffel,  we  got 
a  very  sick  woman  on  our  hands/  he  says  — "  she 
heard  her  mother  reciting  for  the  twentieth  time  the 
last  days,  as  she  went  downstairs  after  carrying  up 
Julia's  meager  tray.  The  neighbors  were  dropping 
in  and  leaving  by  turns ;  the  Reverend  Stegemiller  was 
there  ready  to  pray,  Mrs.  Stegemiller  had  come  with 
him  ready  to  sing  hymns;  Elmer  and  Millie  had  ar- 
rived—  the  latter  an  unexpected  reinforcement  in 
preserving  sick-room  proprieties.  Millie  did  not  in 
the  least  want  to  see  her  Aunt  Julia;  she  had  always 
been  in  the  habit  of  saving  herself  from  disagreeable 
spectacles  such  as  sickness  and  suffering,  and  more- 
over she  was  afraid  that  "  it "  might  be  catching. 


THE  NOON-MARK  297 

Her  gently  insinuated  hints  about  the  doctor's  orders, 
about  Miss  Stieffel's  precarious  condition,  about  the 
inadvisability  of  her  receiving  visitors,  about  the 
Health-Board's  requirements  were  much  more  effect- 
ive than  Nettie's  downright  interference.  None  of 
the  company  assailed  poor  Julia  after  all,  not  even 
the  clergyman. 

"  You  know  we  Altruists  believe  hopefully  always," 
Millie  told  the  latter.  "  We  look  always  upward. 
We  try  to  shake  ourselves  free  of  clogging  actualities. 
In  health  we  never  allow  ourselves  to  think  about 
health ;  in  sickness,  we  never  allow  ourselves  to  think 
about  sickness.  We  don't  admit  the  Negation  called 
Death.  Aunt  Julia  was  studying  Altruism ;  she  was 
going  to  join  us;  and  I'm  sure  she  would  rather — " 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  know,"  said  the  Reverend,  hastily, 
turning  rather  red ;  "  I  looked  upon  Miss  Stieffel  as 
a  member  of  my  congregation.  But  if  she  was  —  is, 
I  mean  —  an  —  er  —  an  Altruist,  of  course  she  would 
prefer  —  er  —  a  —  her  own  minister.  In  the  Father's 
house  are  many  mansions  —  er  — " 

"  Aunt  Julia  hasn't  ever  been  much  of  anything  in  a 
church  way.  She's  just  a  good  woman,"  said  Nettie, 
shortly.  "  But  if  you  go  to  having  any  prayers  or 
services  around  here,  Altruist  or  any  other  kind,  you 
might  as  well  start  hammering  nails  in  her  coffin. 
It  isn't  good  for  people  sick  the  way  she  is." 

"  Nettie  hasn't  ever  been  very  spiritual,"  Millie  ex- 
plained, kindly,  with  the  effect  of  smoothing  over  and 
hushing  up  an  indecorum.  But  nevertheless  Mr. 
Stegemiller  who,  it  is  likely,  had  innocently  consid- 
ered his  extempore  prayer  and  Mrs.  Stegemiller's 
rendition  of  "  Rock  of  Ages  "  the  pith  of  the  evening, 
departed  not  long  after ;  and  the  rest  of  the  Avenue, 


298  THE  NOON-MAEK 

cheated  out  of  emotional  recreation,  dribbled  off,  too. 
When  they  were  all  gone  Nettie  arraigned  Mrs.  Elmer 
sharply. 

"  How  did  you  know  about  Aunt  Julia?  Did  you 
know  she  was  taking  lessons  from  that  old  Mrs. 
Evans,  trying  to  get  well?     Paying  her  for  'em?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Millie,  placidly. 

"  Millie  Aymar,  how  could  you  let  her  do  that?  " 

"  Why,  Nettie,  she  wanted  to,  and  how  could  I  stop 
her?  Mrs.  Evans  never  said  it  would  cure  her;  I 
know  she  didn't.  I  never  said  so  either.  Aunt  Julia 
just  got  the  notion  in  her  head  somehow." 

"  Yes,  she  got  it  in  listening  to  your  humbug  talk, 
and  you  and  Mrs.  Evans  let  it  stay  in ! "  cried  out 
Nettie,  shaking  with  anger.  "  You  knew  perfectly 
well  what  Aunt  Julia  thought,  and  you  let  that  fat 
fake  take  her  money,  and  all  the  time  she  was  getting 
worse  and  worse — " 

"  Oh,  here,  now,  Nettie  — !  "  expostulated  Elmer. 
He  looked  at  his  wife  uneasily;  Elmer  was  a  little 
afraid  of  his  Millie,  by  this  time. 

"  You  oughtn't  to  talk  like  that,  Nettie,"  said  Millie 
with  fine  patience.  "  We  Altruists  don't  believe  the 
same  as  you  do,  but  we  don't  call  names,  and  think 
evil  of  everybody  but  ourselves.  Of  course  we  aren't 
any  of  us  perfect,  and  we  often  succumb  to  Error  — " 

"  Oh,  cut  that  stuff  out !  It's  all  part  of  the  skin 
game  and  you  know  it — " 

"  Oh,  look  here  now,  girls,  don't  — " 

"  If  Aunt  Julia  chose  to  spend  her  money  that  way, 
she  had  a  right  to,"  said  Millie,  unruffled.  "  Of 
course  you  were  her  pet,  and  she  would  have  left 
everything  to  you.     But  it  wouldn't  have  been  much 


THE  NOON-MARK  299 

—  not  enough  to  be  worth  all  the  fuss  you're  making. 
I  can't  understand  you,  Net.  I  wouldn't  have  be- 
lieved you  thought  so  much  about  money." 

"  Now,  Millie !  "  pleaded  Elmer,  helplessly. 

Nettie  had  no  answer.  What  was  there  for  her  to 
say?  In  truth,  only  one  thing  more,  which,  after  a 
silence,  she  told  them.  It  produced  another  silence 
of  much  heavier  concern  on  everybody's  part,  even 
Millie's.  If  Nettie  did  not  immediately  get  another 
position,  somebody  would  have  to  take  care  of  her  — 
somebody  would  have  to  take  care  of  the  other 
Stieffels  of  whom  Nettie  had  been  more  or  less  taking 
care. 

"I'm  awfully  sorry,  Net,"  Millie  said,  sincerely 
enough.  "  We'd  like  to  help,  but  the  way  things  are 
nowadays,  it's  as  much  as  anybody  can  do  to  get  along 
and  pay  their  own  expenses.  It's  a  pity  this  had  to 
happen  just  now.  But  you'll  get  something  right 
off.     Don't  you  know  of  something  for  her,  Elmer?  " 

"  Why  no,  not  just  now,  but  — " 

"  I  don't  want  your  help,"  said  Nettie  sullenly.  "  I 
can  get  something  for  myself.  I've  extra  work  I  do, 
anyhow,  outside  the  bank  hours.  I'm  thinking  about 
Aunt  Julia.  We've  got  to  arrange  for  her  somehow. 
We've  got  to !  " 

"  Sure !  "  said  Elmer  heartily.  A  look  from  his 
wife  quelled  him. 

"  It  does  seem  as  if  Nettie  could  have  put  up  with 
Emil  Marklein — " 

"  Millie,  I  told  you  what  he  said  to  me !  At  least, 
I  didn't  tell  it  all  right  out,  because  I  —  I  can't  —  I 
can't  say  what  he  did.  Men  kill  another  man  for 
things  like  that  —  or  horsewhip  'em  anyhow !  " 


300  THE  NOON-MARK 

"  That's  so.  But  you  ought  to  have  come  to  me, 
Nettie.  I'd  have  let  him  know  where  he  got  off !  " 
said  Elmer,  with  formidable  significance. 

"  I  was  going  to  say,  if  Net  wouldn't  catch  a  person 
up  so,  that  if  she  would  just  have  put  up  with  him 
until  she  made  sure  of  another  job,  it  would  have  been 
a  good  deal  better  for  everybody  all  around,"  said 
Millie.  "  There  wouldn't  have  been  any  harm  in  that, 
only  common-sense.  You  could  have  told  old  Mr. 
Marklein,  for  that  matter.  There  were  ever  so  many 
things  you  could  have  done."  She  spoke  testily,  for 
it  was  the  real  Millie  speaking.  Negation  and  Error 
had  both  gone  to  the  wall ! 

Elmer  winced;  to  hear  this  time-serving  doctrine 
from  any  woman  would  have  somehow  shamed  him, 
and  he  was  hearing  it  from  Millie.  "  If  she'd  gone  to 
the  old  man  and  told  on  Emil,  he'd  have  had  to  fire 
her  anyhow.  He  can't  listen  to  any  stories  like  that. 
It's  the  looks  of  the  thing.  He  has  to  —  what's  this 
they  say  now  —  to  '  save  his  face.'  That's  it.  He'd 
have  had  to  fire  Nettie  anyhow  to  '  save  his  face.'  So 
it's  as  broad  as  it's  long,"  he  said,  heavily.  "  You  did 
just  right,  Nettie  —  only  it  might  have  made  a  differ- 
ence if  you'd  come  to  me.  I'd  have  fixed  him  —  the 
scoundrel ! "  said  Elmer,  looking  quite  valiant  and 
terrible. 

"Oh,  Elmer,  you  wouldn't — !"  Mrs.  Stieffel 
sighed  affrightedly;  she  herself  rather  inclined  to 
Millie's  views  on  the  way  to  handle  the  situation. 

"  Well,  I'm  as  sorry  as  can  be.  I'd  do  anything  on 
earth  to  help  Aunt  Julia,  if  we  just  could!  "  Millie 
repeated.  "  But  it  wouldn't  do  any  good  for  us  to  go 
in  debt  and  get  to  be  dependent  ourselves.  That 
would  just  be  sort  of  shoving  the  trouble  around  from 


THE  NOON-MARK  301 

one  person  to  another.  If  it  wasn't  for  that,  I'd  give 
every  last  cent  I've  got.  But  you  see  how  it  is !  We 
can't  do  anything !  " 

Nettie  saw  distinctly  how  it  was;  she  told  herself 
dully  that  she  had  known  how  it  would  be  all  along. 
But  after  the  Hands  couple  had  said  good-night  and 
left  the  house,  Elmer  came  running  back  ostensibly 
for  a  forgotten  umbrella  but  in  reality  to  draw  Nettie 
aside  into  a  corner.  "  Say,  I  guess  I  can  scare  up  a 
little  for  you,  Nettie.  To  help  pay  for  your  aunt,  I 
mean.  She's  always  worked  faithful,  and  been  as 
kind  as  could  be  to  us,  and  —  and  —  and  it's  a  darn 
shame  —  and  I  want  to  help,"  the  honest  fellow  de- 
clared with  a  not  unmanly  emotion.  "  Millie  wants 
to,  too.  She  was  just  talking,  you  know,"  he  added 
loyally.  It  was  not  true,  and  Nettie  knew  it,  but  her 
heart  warmed  to  Elmer.  She  thanked  him  with  tears 
in  her  eyes. 


XX 

JAMES  PEABODY,  Esquire,  of  the  Peabody  Tool 
Works,  was  at  this  date  in  the  neighborhood  of 
forty-seven  years  old,  and  looked  older,  despite 
the  fact  that  he  had  kept  his  waist-measure  and  most 
of  his  hair;  but  then  he  had  never  looked  young.  Of 
late  he  was  popularly  supposed  to  have  arrived  at  the 
goal  of  all  good  Americans,  financial  ease,  indeed  at 
much  more  than  ease  with  the  outbreak  of  the  Euro- 
pean War  and  the  demand  for  all  sorts  of  machinery 
rising  mountainously.  A  good  while  previous  to  that 
abnormal  development,  however,  he  must  have  been 
well  started  towards  success;  he  had  put  upwards  of 
two  decades  of  grinding  hard  work  behind  him,  since 
the  death  of  his  father  left  the  whole  burden  of  the 
business  with  its  debts  and  difficulties  on  his  shoul- 
ders. 

Peabody  senior  was  the  man  with  the  vision,  ac- 
cording to  people  who  had  known  him ;  they  said  that 
James  the  son  would  never  have  had  the  initiative  to 
found  such  a  concern  as  the  Tool  Works,  for  all  the 
energy  and  ability  he  displayed  in  carrying  it  on. 
Times  were  different  back  in  the  seventies  when  his 
father  began ;  the  older  Peabody  had  an  up-hill  strug- 
gle for  ten  or  fifteen  years.  It  wore  him  out ;  he  died 
with  the  dream  unfulfilled,  but  the  second  James, 
after  who  knows  how  many  vicissitudes,  laborious 
days,  worried  nights,  made  it  come  true. 

He  was  unmarried,  never  having  taken  a  recess 
from  his  machine  tool  making  long  enough  to  fall  in 

302 


THE  NOON-MAKK  303 

love,  or  never  having  seen  a  woman  that  caught  his 
fancy,  or  it  may  be  never  having  allowed  himself  to 
look  at  a  woman  at  all.  Here  he  was,  a  prosperous 
middle-aged  bachelor  with  a  handsome  suite  of  rooms 
at  the  club,  all  the  motor-cars  he  pleased,  which  is  to 
say  one,  and  that  of  a  plain  and  medium-priced  type, 
and  a  set  of  friends  mostly  older  than  himself  whose 
ideas  of  recreation  corresponded  with  his  own ;  that 
is,  they  liked  to  get  together  at  the  luncheon-hour  and 
talk  business.  It  is  doubtful  if  Mr.  Peabody  had  ever 
set  foot  in  a  single  one  of  their  houses,  although  he 
had  no  bad  habits,  and  was  entirely  presentable.  To 
be  sure  he  had  met  most  of  the  ladies  appertaining  to 
them,  but  the  acquaintance  somehow  never  got  any 
farther  than  an  introduction.  "  Sallie,  this  is  Mr. 
Peabody  you've  heard  me  talk  about.  Jim,  my  wife." 
And  there  it  ended.  James,  who  was  observant  and 
had  a  retentive  memory,  never  failed  to  recognize 
them  afterwards,  raising  his  hat  sedately  as  they 
passed ;  but  there  it  ended.  He  may  or  may  not  have 
noticed  their  reciprocal  smiles.  You  might  have 
thought  him  lonesome  in  his  homeless  and  solitary 
estate,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was  too  used  to  his 
life  and  too  busy  to  think  about  it. 

Observe  him,  then,  clean-shaven  —  the  fashion  of 
clean  shaving  was  inaugurated  just  as  James  came  of 
age,  and  he  stuck  to  it  —  neatly  dressed,  with  his  iron- 
gray  hair  and  his  multiplying  crows'-feet,  going  down 
to  the  office  one  morning  and  going  through  the  pile 
of  mail  on  his  desk,  and  sending  for  his  stenographer. 
And  observe  the  latter  coming  in,  a  competent-looking 
young  woman  with  a  mouth  as  firm  as  his  own.  Mr. 
Peabody  glanced  at  her;  glanced  again. 

"  You're  the  new  one?  "  he  said,  without  interest 


304  THE  NOON-MARK 

much  less  curiosity,  but  also  without  discourtesy;  it 
was  a  mere  form. 

"  Yes,  sir.     Mr.  Fick  hired  me." 

Mr.  Peabody  made  a  sound  of  assent,  coupled  with 
a  slight  gesture  towards  the  opposite  side  of  his  vast, 
flat-topped  desk  and  whatever  chair  might  be  in  that 
vicinity.     "  Uh.     Take  dictation,  please." 

She  sat  down  and  took  it. 

This  was  all  that  passed  at  the  first  sitting,  and  for 
numberless  sittings  thereafter.  Very  little  conversa- 
tion unrelated  to  business  matters  went  on  anywhere 
in  the  Peabody  offices ;  everybody  staved  along  at  his 
appointed  task  with  all  steam  up,  just  as  everybody 
was  staving  along  in  the  Works  themselves  that  cov- 
ered forty  acres  of  ground  up  the  C.  &  R.  railroad 
at  Kirk's  Station.  Day  shift,  night  shift,  the  twelve 
hundred  workmen  swarmed  to  and  fro,  the  siren  bel- 
lowed periodically,  the  furnaces  blazed  as  if  in  com- 
petition with  those  of  gehenna.  If  James  the  first 
could  only  have  glimpsed  it,  how  happy  it  would  have 
made  him ! 

Under  these  conditions,  it  must  have  been  all  of 
ten  days  later,  just  at  the  finish  as  the  new  one  was 
gathering  together  her  papers,  that  Mr.  Peabody  said : 
"Oh  —  ah  —  Miss — ?     What  is  your  name?" 

"  Nettie  Stieffel." 

"  Your  work  is  very  good." 

"  I'm  experienced,"  said  Nettie.  It  did  not  occur 
to  her  to  thank  him.  What  he  had  said  was  no  com- 
pliment from  Nettie's  standpoint ;  it  was  a  statement 
of  fact.  Mr.  Peabody  himself  so  regarded  it,  for  that 
matter. 

"  Yes.  I  see  you  are.  Where  were  you  before 
this?  "  he  said. 


THE  NOON-MARK  305 

"With  Mr.  Marklein  at  the  Travelers'  And 
Traders.' " 

"  Uh,"  said  James  with  his  slight  grunt,  which  was 
never  disagreeable,  and  this  time  held  a  note  of  satis- 
faction. "  I  knew  I  had  seen  that  girl  somewhere/' 
he  was  saying  to  himself  as  Nettie  went  out  of  the 
room ;  it  pleased  him  as  a  vindication  of  the  reliability 
of  that  memory  on  which  he  set  a  pretty  high  value. 

As  for  Nettie,  she  liked  this  position ;  all  she  craved 
was  work,  and  here  there  was  enough  and  to  spare. 
She  had  passed  through  a  period  of  unwilling  leisure, 
punctuated,  so  to  speak,  with  odd  jobs  here  and  there. 
Actually  brief  —  not  more  than  three  or  four  weeks 
—  it  seemed  to  her  to  have  lasted  a  life-time !  There 
were  days  of  desperate  search  trudging  from  one  office 
to  another,  days  of  waiting,  sickening  disappoint- 
ments; she  used  to  look  in  the  glass  and  marvel  that 
her  hair  had  not  gone  white  —  that  hair  of  Emil's 
disastrous  admiration.  All  the  while,  she  had  to  tor- 
ture her  unskilled  invention  for  subterfuges  wherewith 
to  deceive  Julia  at  the  Good  Samaritan,  recovering 
slowly  in  happy  ignorance  of  Nettie's  plight.  And 
once  she  had  to  "  stand  off "  the  grocer  —  yes,  she, 
Nettie  Stieffel,  who  had  never  owed  a  dollar  since 
earning  her  own  first  dollar  —  she  had  to  go  to  Mr. 
Harmeyer  and  ask  him  to  wait-  It  was  a  bitter  pill ; 
all  her  life  she  would  remember  that  humiliating 
moment;  although  Mr.  Harmeyer,  who  himself  must 
undoubtedlv  have  had  to  ask  for  an  extension  of  credit 

m 

more  than  once  in  his  career,  granted  the  favor  with- 
out unkind  emphasis.  He  had  some  inkling  of  the 
state  of  the  Stieffel  affairs,  in  common  with  the  rest 
of  Rochester  Avenue;  but  that  was  small  comfort  to 
Nettie's  proudly  independent   spirit;  it  rankled,  it 


306  THE  NOON-MARK 

goaded.  The  public's  demonstrations  of  sympathy,  its 
facile  sentiment,  its  innocent,  artless  curiosity  drove 
her  into  a  fury;  there  was  a  time  when  she  got  to  slip- 
ping in  and  out  of  the  house  by  stealth,  dodging 
around  corners,  feigning  not  to  see  people,  practicing 
a  dozen  other  sneaking  expedients  that  she  loathed, 
to  avoid  the  eternal  questions  and  explanations  and 
condolences.     It  was  a  nightmare. 

It  was  a  nightmare,  but  it  was  over.  Now  she 
was  back  in  her  natural  milieu  —  something  which 
she  never  would  have  called  it,  by  the  way !  —  happy 
enough  to  have  gone  singing  all  day  long  if  singing 
during  office-hours  had  not  been  a  scandalous  impro- 
priety. When  Fick  engaged  her  upon  her  answer- 
ing his  advertisement,  Nettie  could  have  fallen  upon 
his  neck  with  embraces;  it  did  not  matter  that  she 
was  the  only  applicant  and  that  in  the  extremity,  he 
would  have  taken  almost  anybody ;  by  this  time  Nettie 
had  dismissed  all  those  top-lofty  notions  about  her 
paramount  qualifications  as  an  office-girl! 

After  the  above  recorded  conversation,  the  associa- 
tion warmed  to  the  point  of  their  exchanging  a  "  Good- 
morning,"  and  telling  each  other  that  it  was  a  nice 
day  or  a  bad  day  or  hot  or  cold  as  the  case  might 
be.  But  the  first  really  lively  interchange  of  talk  was 
inaugurated  when  Mr.  Peabody  remarked,  wrinkling 
his  nose  with  strong  disfavor :  "  What  is  that  abom- 
inable smell?" 

"  It's  this  ink,  Mr.  Peabody.  They  had  the  same 
kind  over  at  the  bank.  It's  all  bad  nowadays.  They 
must  be  putting  something  in  it.  I  guess  they  can't 
get  the  right  stuff  any  more." 

Mr.  Peabody  picked  up  the  ink-well  which  was 
freshly  filled,  and  sniffed  at  it.     "Great  day!"  he 


THE  NOON-MARK  307 

exclaimed,  setting  it  down  hastily.  His  expression 
and  gesture  and  that  recondite  oath  which  was  the 
only  one  he  was  ever  known  to  employ,  surprised 
Nettie  into  a  laugh.     He  smiled,  too,  catching  her. 

"  Why,  he  isn't  so  old  after  all !  "  Nettie  thought, 
startled  by  some  flash  of  boyishness  about  that  smile. 
The  Peabody  Tool  Works  had  been  in  existence  with 
James  Peabody  at  the  head  ever  since  she  could  re- 
member ;  her  father  had  spoken  of  having  known  him 
before  she  was  born ;  and  she  had  vaguely  placed  him 
not  much  this  side  of  seventy. 

She  had  been  in  the  Peabody  office,  and  Julia  was 
out  of  the  hospital  some  months  looking  strangely 
younger  but  "  not  good  for  anything "  as  she  com- 
plained wistfully,  when  the  United  States  entered 
the  war.  The  drag-net  of  Circumstance  with  its  huge 
proportions,  its  incredibly  minute  meshes,  swept  up 
the  Stieffels  along  with  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
others,  greater  and  lesser.  Roy  volunteered;  he  had 
just  turned  nineteen  and  would  have  to  go  anyhow, 
he  remarked  philosophically.  David  lied  about  his 
age  and  went  too.  Nettie  could  no  longer  preserve 
her  impersonal  pose ;  in  the  intervals  of  clashing  away 
at  her  typewriter,  she  knitted  vehemently  for  our  own 
boys  instead  of  the  Belgians,  but  there  were  few  such 
intervals.  If  the  Works  had  been  busy  before,  they 
went  into  a  very  frenzy  of  activity  now.  Some  of  the 
office-force,  among  them  not  infrequently  Nettie  her- 
self, were  to  be  found  working  under  green  eye-shades 
long  after  hours  every  night.  Mr.  Peabody  spent  his 
days  between  Washington  and  home;  he  had  con- 
tracts, and  there  were  Government  engineers  forever 
waiting  to  see  him,  or  assembling  around  his  table 
with  the  blue-prints  spread  all  over  it.     Sometimes 


308  THE  NOON-MARK 

Nettie  would  be  called  in  amongst  the  tired,  earnest 
men,  the  khaki  coats,  the  mounds  of  papers,  the  in- 
terminable lists  of  calculations. 

"That  young  woman  is  trustworthy?"  was  occa- 
sionally asked.     Mr.  Peabody  believed  her  to  be. 

"  She  has  plenty  of  intelligence,  as  you  must  have 
noticed,  and  considerable  strength  of  character,  or 
I'm  no  judge,"  he  said,  and  added :  "  I  don't  take  much 
stock  in  all  this  hue-and-cry  about  spies." 

"  We've  got  to  trust  somebody  anyhow,"  one  of  the 
men  said.  It  was  pointed  out  that  women  might  be 
well-intentioned  enough,  but  in  general  they  could  be 
duped  or  blarneyed  with  deplorable  ease. 

"  Not  this  one,  I  think,"  said  Mr.  Peabody.  Never- 
theless he  did  take  occasion  to  say  to  Nettie  one  day 
with  a  hesitation  not  usual  with  him :  "  Miss  Stieffel, 

you  of  course  never  —  er talk  outside  about  what 

goes  on  here?  " 

"  No,  sir,"  said  Nettie  in  a  controlled  voice,  meeting 
his  eye  steadily.  "  I  think  I'd  know  if  anybody  was 
trying  to  pump  me,  too.  I  think  I'd  know  !"  She 
kept  her  temper  under,  but  got  so  red  that  Mr.  Pea- 
body spoke  again  quickly.  "  That  is  what  I  thought," 
he  said,  and  Nettie  was  placated. 

The  little  incident  in  some  way  established  or 
affirmed  a  sober  intimacy  very  much  such  as  had 
existed  between  Mr.  Marklein  and  herself;  their  rela- 
tionship contrived  to  be  impersonal  yet  kind,  even 
genial,  for  this  employer,  Nettie  discovered,  possessed 
some  qualities  which  she  could  not  define  but  which 
she  knew  old  Emil  lacked ;  they  may  have  been  humor 
and  sympathy.  Moreover,  he  brought  his  excellent 
memory  into  play  by  saying  another  day :  "  I  used  to 
know  a  man  named  Stieffel  years  and  years  ago.     I 


THE  NOON-MARK  309 

believe  he  was  at  the  Travelers'  And  Traders'  at  one 
time.     Frank  Stieffel.     Any  relation?  " 

"  That's  my  father.     He  remembers  you." 

"  Yes?  "  He  asked  more  questions.  "  Locomotor? 
That's  pretty  hard.  I'm  sorry  to  hear  it."  He  was 
silent  a  moment ;  Nettie  did  not  guess  that  he  was 
thinking  with  wonder  how  small  the  city  had  been  in 
those  days!  There  were  different  circles,  of  course; 
the  women  attended  to  that.  They  always  do,  every- 
where. But  in  retrospect,  it  seemed  to  him  that  prac- 
tically all  the  men  in  business  knew  one  another  — 
all  the  young  fellows,  certainly.  And  look  at  it  now ! 
One  of  the  clubs  he  belonged  to  numbered  some  fifteen 
hundred  members,  of  whom  there  were  scores  whom 
Jim  had  never  met.  And  look  at  the  traffic,  the  sky- 
scrapers! They  had  always  had  a  rotten  political 
ring  with  an  abundance  of  salable  gangsters  and 
handy-men  —  very  up-to-date  in  that  respect,  at  least ; 
but  otherwise,  what  changes  a  quarter  of  a  century 
had  wrought !  He  had  made  something  of  a  name, 
and  a  fortune  beside  which  the  biggest  fortunes  of 
those  years  were  inconsiderable ;  but  as  things  went 
nowadays,  if  he  should  be  attacked  by  locomotor  he 
would  drop  out  and  be  forgotten  as  soon  and  com- 
pletely as  this  poor  devil  of  a  Stieffel.  "  Well,  re- 
member me  to  him,  will  you?  "  he  said,  and  put  aside 
his  bootless  moralizing,  and  got  back  to  work. 

Some  while  later  he  inquired  where  she  lived;  he 
had  wanted  to  call  her  up.  but  her  family  did  not 
appear  among  the  roll  of  Stieffels  in  the  telephone- 
book,  so  the  matter,  luckily  of  no  urgent  importance, 
had  to  wait.  "  Oh,  we  haven't  got  any,"  said  Nettie 
rather  amused.     As  if  they  could  afford  a  telephone! 

Mr.    Peabody    repeated    the    address    after    her. 


310  THE  NOON-MARK 

"  Rochester  Avenue,  Maplehurst.  Oh,  yes,  that's 
right  by  the  old  McQuair  property.  The  house  is 
there  still  —  will  be  as  long  as  the  old  lady  lives,  I 
suppose  — "  He  interrupted  himself  — "  She  is  living 
still,  isn't  she?" 

"  Yes.     Pretty  feeble." 

"  I  thought  we  were  paying  her  dividend  yet  — " 
A  succeeding  thought  made  James  smile.  "  I  met 
her  once  —  went  out  there  to  see  her." 

"  That  time  you  stopped  the  fight?  "  said  Nettie. 

He  started,  and  stared  at  her  hard.  "  Great  day! 
Were  you  — ?  I  recollect  there  were  some  little  girls 
there.     One  of  'em  wanted  to  turn  the  hose  on  — " 

"That  was  me/"  said  Nettie,  twinkling.  They 
both  laughed. 

"  I  remember  thinking  at  the  time  that  that  was 
the  most  practical  measure  I  ever  heard  of  —  practi- 
cal and  original,"  Mr.  Peabody  said. 

Nettie  hastened  to  assure  him  scrupulously  that 
she  had  not  thought  it  out  by  herself.  "I  wasn't 
smart  enough  for  that.  Seems  to  me  Jim  Marvin  — 
he  was  that  biggest  boy  —  seems  to  me  he  told  me 
about  seeing  a  dog-fight  broken  up  that  way — " 
Some  change  in  Peabody's  expression  halted  her ;  then 
suddenly  she  remembered. 

"Marvin?"  he  said  rather  abruptly.  "How  did 
you  happen  to  know  him?  " 

'  Why,  I've  known  him  ever  since  we  were  little 
children  —  just  kids,"  Nettie  said,  openly.  "I  still 
see  him  every  now  and  then  —  when  he's  in  town. 
But  it's  been  ever  so  long  now  — "  Mr.  Marvin,  in 
fact,  performed  his  well-known  vanishing  feat  some 
six  months  before;  it  synchronized  with  our  declara- 
tion of  war,  something  which  Nettie  had  already  re- 


THE  NOON-MARK  311 

marked  and  from  which  she  had  drawn  a  shrewd  in- 
ference, for  she  went  on  ingenuously :  "  I  thought  he 
was  trying  to  dodge  the  draft,  but  it'll  get  him  any- 
how.    They  get  everybody." 

Mr.  Peabody  smiled.  "  I  see  you've  got  a  pretty 
good  line  on  him." 

"  Why,  of  course !  I  told  you  I  knew  him !  "  Nettie 
said;  and  at  that  the  other  chuckled  outright. 

"  I  caught  that  fellow  in  a  piece  of  crooked  work, 
when  he  was  employed  in  this  office  five  years  or  so 
ago,"  said  he.  "  It  wasn't  anything  he  could  be  held 
for,  as  it  happened.  He  was  one  of  those  boys,  you 
say?     Funny!" 

Nobody  knew  better  than  Nettie  what  the  piece  of 
crooked  work  had  been.  As  Mr.  Peabody  spoke,  she 
wondered  at  herself  —  and  it  was  not  the  first  time  — 
for  ever  suffering  Jim  to  come  near  her.  She  won- 
dered, too,  if  Mr.  Peabody  would  understand  how  one 
could  like  a  person  and  have  a  contempt  for  him  at 
the  same  time,  supposing  she  tried  to  explain  to  him 
about  herself  and  Jim.  The  trouble  was  that  she 
herself  could  not  understand  the  contradiction.  A 
student  of  sex  would  have  found  in  her  attitude  a 
triumphant  vindication  of  the  theory  that  a  woman 
cannot  or  will  not  judge  a  case  on  its  merits,  but 
insists  on  reducing  it  to  personalities.  Nettie  knew 
that  Marvin  was  a  blackguard  —  but  he  had  never 
done  anything  blackguardly  to  her.  He  would  never, 
for  instance,  offer  her  the  insult  young  Marklein  had 
offered.  Jim  respected  her,  he  wanted  to  marry  her; 
and  for  any  woman  on  earth,  even  so  just  and  clear- 
sighted a  woman  as  Nettie,  that  balanced  the  scales. 
Emil,  by  the  way,  was  one  of  those  whom  the  draft 
had  "got";  he  was  up  at  Camp  Sherman,  discon- 


312  THE  NOON-MARK 

tentedly  drilling.  Elmer  Hands  could  have  got  a 
dispensation,  seeing  that  he  had  a  wife  to  support; 
but  he  had  gone  with  the  rest,  and  Mrs.  Elmer  did  not 
appear  to  miss  him  much,  or  to  be  greatly  concerned 
about  his  future.  There  had  been  what  Rochester 
Avenue  termed  in  inelegant  but  spirited  language, 
"  ructions  "  between  the  two ;  and  it  was  even  hinted 
under  cover  that  divorce  proceedings  were  in  the  air. 
The  trouble  was  said  to  date  from  Millie's  conversion 
to  Altruism  —  not  that  Elmer  had  any  deep-seated 
religious  convictions,  not  on  that  score  at  all;  he 
would  probably  just  as  lief  have  joined  the  Altruistic 
Brotherhood  himself.  What  he  stuck  at  —  they  said 
—  was  Millie's  aspirations  to  Leadership ;  he  admired 
her  immensely,  he  was  proud  of  her  talents  —  but  he 
did  not  want  a  Leader  for  a  wife.  And,  as  has  here- 
tofore been  stated,  no  Leader  wanted  a  husband. 

Nettie,  naturally,  was  aware  of  all  this,  though  the 
gossip  incontinently  ceased,  withered  away  like 
Jonah's  gourd,  in  her  presence.  She  would  not  listen, 
and  steadfastly  refused  to  take  sides.  She  could  not 
believe  in  Millie's  sincerity;  she  told  herself  wearily 
that  there  must  be  something  in  it  for  Millie  —  pay, 
position,  notice,  entertainment,  something.  But 
Millie  was  her  cousin,  and  she  would  not  say  anything 
about  her,  for  or  against. 

"  I'm  sorry,  Elmer,"  was  as  far  as  she  would  go 
in  sympathy,  when  he  came  to  see  them  a  few  days 
before  leaving.     "  About  you  and  Millie,  I  mean." 

"  Oh,  if  she  wants  it,  I  shan't  do  anything.  I'd  hate 
to  have  people  think  it  was  for  desertion  or  non-sup- 
port—  and  of  course  that's  what  most  of  'em  will 
think,"  said  Elmer  morosely.  "  You  know  I've  always 
provided  the  best  I  could,  and  I  wouldn't  dream  of 


THE  NOON-MARK  313 

going  off  and  leaving  her  scratch  along  by  herself,  like 
some  men  do  their  wives.  But  what's  the  use?  I'm 
not  going  to  contest  it.  She  can  charge  anything  she 
wants  to." 

"  Oh,  she'll  say  incompatibility,  Elmer.  Why,  she 
can't  say  anything  else;  it  would  be  ridiculous. 
Everybody  knows." 

"  It  don't  make  any  difference,  as  long  as  she  gets 
the  decree  —  that's  all  she  wants.  I'm  not  going  to 
stand  in  her  way." 

Mrs.  Stieffel  uttered  a  melancholy  murmur  about 
alimony,  and  he  took  her  up  savagely. 

"  Yeah.  I  suppose  there'll  be  alimony.  It  don't 
make  any  difference."  He  stared  down  at  the  floor. 
"  Six  years.  Nobody'd  have  thought  it  was  going  to 
end  this  way,  would  they?  Well — !  It  ain't  my 
fault,  anyhow.     Well  — !     S'  long,  folks !  " 

He  went ;  all  the  young  men  went.  In  every  shop, 
hotel,  restaurant  and  office,  the  staff  thinned  out  and 
the  gaps  were  more  or  less  inadequately  reinforced 
with  girls  —  girls,  it  may  be  added,  of  all  ages,  even 
up  to  the  fifties;  the  hall-ways  and  elevators  rustled 
with  skirts,  chirped  with  light  voices.  It  was  even 
necessary  to  admit  them  to  the  celibate  regions  of  the 
clubs  where  not  the  descent  of  the  Hunnish  hordes 
themselves  could  have  aroused  greater  consternation 
among  the  superannuated  masculine  personnel  that 
remained.  Those  elderly  head-waiters  and  stewards 
could  have  wept  to  behold  a  female  creature  taking 
orders  in  their  impeccably  smart  dining-rooms  —  a 
female  who  didn't  know  filet  mignon  from  liver-and- 
bacon,  who  thought  Camembert  was  some  sort  of 
soup,  who  went  tilting  around  on  spool-heeled  slip- 
pers,  wore   a  low-necked  lace  waist,   addressed  the 


314  THE  NOON-MARK 

gentlemen  as  "  mister "  and  called  the  ladies 
"  dearie."     It  was  tragedy. 

Nettie  Stieffel,  who  herself  was  "  doubling  "  in  Mr. 
Fick's  place  at  the  Peabody  offices,  shared  this  feeling 
of  outrage  and  superiority;  she  now  had  a  raft  of 
incompetents  —  so  she  regarded  them  —  under  her, 
whose  mistakes  tried  her  patience  to  a  limit  only 
exceeded  by  the  indifference  with  which  they  wit- 
nessed her  labors  in  correction.  It  seemed  to  her 
they  must  be  endowed  with  an  India-rubber  resiliency 
of  mind  and  memory  and  conscience,  upon  which  she 
might  toil  in  vain  to  make  an  impression.  Very 
likely  she  exaggerated  their  shortcomings ;  her  pitiless 
standards  exacted  as  much  of  herself  as  of  her  under- 
lings, and  she  was  undoubtedly  tired  and  nervous. 
Peabody  himself  remonstrated  with  her.  "  You're 
taking  all  the  hills  on  high/'  he  said,  shaking  his 
head  at  her  in  kindly  warning.  "  No  engine  will 
stand  that  for  long." 

"  But,  Mr.  Peabody,  who's  going  to  do  it  if  I  don't? 
Why,  I  couldn't  sleep  at  night  if  I  left  anything  to 
this  bunch,  without  overseeing  it  myself.  You  don't 
know  what  they  might  do.  They  haven't  got  any 
sense." 

"  They  haven't  got  your  sense,"  said  James.  "  But 
it  wouldn't  hurt  to  put  a  little  responsibility  on  them, 
and  see  if  they  didn't  develop  some  sense  under  it. 
That  happens  sometimes.  You  yourself  didn't  know 
as  much  when  you  began  as  you  do  now." 

"  The  thing  is  I  learned,  and  this  lot  never  will," 
said  Nettie  obstinately. 

"  But  you'll  break  down." 

"  All  right,  I'll  break  down !  " 

"  Well,  then,  I'll  tell  you  what,"  said  the  head  of 


THE  NOON-MAKK  315 

the  office,  after  a  minute's  thought.  "  If  you  will  in- 
sist on  staying  late  and  working  till  all  hours  of  the 
night,  let  me  send  my  machine  to  take  you  home,  any- 
how. I'll  have  the  man  come  every  night  at  what- 
ever hour  you  set.  That'll  save  you  that  long,  tiring 
ride  home  on  the  cars  —  and  at  night,  too  —  I'm  not 
sure  — " 

"  Why,  I've  done  it  all  my  life,  Mr.  Peabody." 
"  That's  a  good  enough  record,  so  you  may  as  well 
stop  it  now!  "  said  James  with  final  authority,  accom- 
panied, however,  by  the  transmuting  smile,  that  al- 
ways for  one  swift  instant,  made  a  boy  of  him.  He 
put  aside  her  thanks.  "  Money  in  my  pocket  to  keep 
you  in  shape !  "  he  said.  And  thereafter  the  plain, 
comfortable  car  with  the  lame  colored  man  who  was 
driving  for  Mr.  Peabody  since  his  chauffeur  went  to 
camp,  appeared  nightly  at  the  specified  time  in  front 
of  the  building.  Xettie  arranged  a  signal  with  him, 
three  staccato  toots  on  the  horn,  and  never  kept  him 
waiting,  punctuality  being  one  of  her  many  unfem- 
inine  habits. 


XXI 

HOLDING  the  opinions  she  did  about  Mr. 
Marvin's  modest  self-effactment,  Nettie  was 
a  good  deal  surprised  when  he  re-appeared 
one  day,  not  quite  in  such  fine  feather  as  on  the  last 
occasion,  but  no  more  modest  and  self-effacing  than  be- 
fore. Jim's  eyes  were  as  quick  and  roving,  his  car- 
riage as  swashbuckling  as  ever,  his  tongue  as  ready 
with  cheap  wit  and  wisdom.  And  so  far  from  shun- 
ning the  notice  of  authority,  he  dared  it,  even  courted 
it  at  every  turn,  mixing  freely  with  the  uniforms, 
prompt  and  plausible  with  explanations  as  to  why  he 
himself  was  not  wearing  one. 

"  They  wouldn't  take  me,  consarn  their  ugly  pic- 
tures !  "  he  said,  striking  a  note  of  humorous  yet 
poignant  chagrin  which  at  once  convinced,  and  en- 
listed sympathy.  "  Tried  five  times  —  nothing  do- 
ing! The  surgeons  all  say  the  same  thing,  so  I  sup- 
pose there  must  be  some  truth  in  it.  Heart.  There's 
what  they  call  a  murmur.  A  '  murmur! ' "  Jim  re- 
peated with  satiric  emphasis.  "I  haven't  noticed 
that  it  makes  any  difference  with  my  appetite.  I 
sleep  like  a  baby,  I  don't  know  there's  such  a  thing  as 
a  nerve  in  my  whole  body,  and  look  at  that  muscle, 
will  you?  It's  pretty  hard.  People  naturally  think : 
'  What's  that  big,  husky  specimen  hanging  round  here 
for?  Why  isn't  he  packing  a  gun  and  training  with 
the  rest  of  the  boys? '  Then  I  have  to  tell  'em  heart y 
and  they  don't  half  believe  me.  The  last  time  I  was 
examined  and  the  sawbones  handed  me  this  heart 

316 


THE  NOON-MARK  317 

stuff,  I  said  to  him :  '  Well,  what  the  heck  difference 
does  your  heart  make?  You're  likely  to  get  a  bullet 
through  it  anyhow  and  in  the  meantime  I  might  have 
a  chance  to  pump  a  few  into  some  fellow  on  the  other 
side  —  and  every  little  helps,  don't  it?  Man  can't 
die  but  once  anyhow ! '  I  says  to  him.  I  was  pretty 
sore.  He  just  laughed.  If  I  had  some  kind  of  a  pull 
I  might  get  in  —  but  I  haven't,  so  there  you  are !  " 
Jim  finished  with  a  sigh. 

"  You  could  get  something  to  do,  though  —  there's 
lots  to  be  done  besides  fighting,"  said  Nettie,  as  usual 
unfeelingly  practical.  "  Desk  work  —  or  you  might 
carry  a  hod  at  one  of  the  construction  camps,  if 
nothing  else  came  along." 

Marvin  allowed  his  unstable  gaze  to  dwell  on  her 
for  one  instant  of  sharp  scrutiny :  he  might  not  have 
been  secure  in  his  own  mind  as  to  the  spirit  of  this 
remark,  or  how  he  had  better  take  it.  "  Yeah.  But 
do  you  know  those  fellows  are  holding  the  Govern- 
ment up  for  ten  dollars  a  day?  Tell  you,  in  the  ranks 
of  Labor,  you'll  find  true  patriotism !  "  he  declaimed 
ironically.  "Not  for  mine!  They  wouldn't  let  me 
in  either,  I  don't  believe.  They've  all  got  unions,  you 
know,  and  I  don't  see  myself  joining  'em.  Nope,  after 
I  got  rejected  by  everybody,  I  just  naturally  thought 
of  something  I  could  do,  all  by  my  little  self."  He 
eyed  her  again,  as  if  hesitating ;  then  came  to  a  deci- 
sion. "  I'd  just  as  soon  tell  you  what  it  is,"  he  said, 
in  a  cautious  voice,  leaning  forward  with  wary  glances 
around  them ;  "  I'm  in  the  Intelligence.  Secret  Serv- 
ice, you  know." 

"  Oh! » 

"  Yeah !  "  He  nodded  at  her.  "  You're  not  to  let 
on  to  anybody,  you  know  that?  " 


318  THE  NOON-MARK 

"  Sure  not !  "  Nettie  agreed  cordially.  She  was,  in- 
deed, not  likely  to  let  on,  if  for  no  other  reason  than 
that  she  could  not  be  certain  whether  this  piece  of 
information  was  true  or  not!  She  had  her  doubts; 
she  always  had  her  doubts  of  Marvin,  sometimes 
against  her  will.  The  thing  was  possible ;  she  had  no 
idea  of  what  a  secret  agent  was  called  upon  to  do,  but 
in  the  very  nature  of  the  work  there  must  be  consider- 
able latitude  allowed  him ;  it  seemed  as  if  Jim  might 
be  better  qualified  for  that  than  for  anything  else, 
better  qualified  than  a  man  of  less  varied  and  dubious 
experience.  The  thing  was  possible  —  but  that  was 
just  the  trouble  with  it!  Set  a  rogue  to  catching 
rogues  was  an  antique  maxim  which  Nettie  instinct- 
ively disbelieved.  It  was  not  that  she  was  too  clever 
to  be  hoaxed,  but  that  she  was  too  honest. 

"  Pretty  busy  round  your  place?  "  Jim  asked. 

"  Everybody's  busy,  aren't  they? "  said  Nettie. 
"  Aren't  you?  " 

"  Oh,  I've  got  enough  to  do,"  he  said  with  signifi- 
cance. "  I  look  like  I  hadn't  a  care  in  the  world,  but 
that's  part  of  this  job." 

Was  it?  Again  suspicion  went  tiptoe  through  her 
mind. 

"  We've  got  office-men  and  field-men  like  any  other 
concern,  generally  speaking,"  Marvin  went  on  ex- 
pansively. "  They  put  you  where  you  can  be  the 
most  use.  Now  I  was  born  in  this  old  town  —  I  know 
it  like  a  book,  so  — "  his  gesture  finished  the  sentence. 
"  How's  the  office  look  these  days?  Same  as  when  I 
used  to  be  there?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  I  never  saw  it  when  you  used  to 
be  there." 

"  Well,  it  took  up  most  of  the  sixth  floor,  His  Nibs, 


THE  NOON-MARK  319 

James  P.,  had  the  room  at  the  southwest  corner  — 
must  have  been  pretty  hot  in  summer,  but  he  never 
seemed  to  mind  it.     Is  he  there  still?  ? 

"  Oh,  he's  all  over  the  place,"  said  Nettie.  "  I  run 
the  girls." 

"  Uh-huh.  I  heard  Fick  had  gone.  There's  hardly 
anybody  but  girls  up  there  now,  they  say.  I  guess 
James  P.  thinks  war's  hell,  all  right !  "  Jim  remarked 
with  his  depraved  humor.  He  looked  at  his  watch 
and  gave  a  start  —  or  affected  to  —  as  suddenly  re- 
membering an  engagement.  "  Well,  I'll  be  dropping 
in  on  you  some  of  these  days.  I'd  like  to  see  the  old 
place."  He  gave  Nettie  a  look  as  if  challenging  her 
to  question  this  bit  of  bravado ;  and  Nettie  let  it  pass. 
If  he  thought  she  believed  it,  or  that  she  had  forgotten 
the  circumstances  of  his  leaving  "  the  old  place,"  or, 
in  short,  was  not  "  on  to  him  "  from  first  to  last  —  if 
he  thought  her  such  a  simp,  why,  let  him!  Nettie 
said  to  herself  contemptuously. 

In  fact,  Mr.  Marvin  made  no  haste  to  carry  out  his 
announced  intention  of  dropping  in;  he  contented 
himself  with  calling  Nettie  up  by  telephone,  with 
asking  her  out  to  luncheon,  with  lavish  offerings  of 
violets  and  bonbons,  and  with  rather  high-flavored 
notes  in  his  reckless  sprawling  hand;  the  messenger- 
boys  were  constantly  arriving  with  them.  It  em- 
barrassed Nettie ;  she  knew  that  her  subordinate  petti- 
coats were  all  eyes  and  ears  and  wagging  tongues,  and 
was  a  little  anxious  lest  it  undermine  her  authority. 
"  I  know  all  about  girls  —  the  run  of  them,"  she 
thought  grimly.  She  refused  Jim's  invitations,  gave 
away  the  stuff,  paraded  her  indifference  to  men's  at- 
tentions and  her  absorption  in  her  work  with  every 
opportunity;  example  is  better  than  precept. 


320  THE  NOON-MARK 

Marvin  went  out  to  the  house  twice  or  thrice;  but 
had  no  luck  in  catching  her.  "  I  told  him  you  weren't 
scarcely  ever  at  home  nowadays,  'count  of  working  at 
the  office  morning,  noon  and  night,"  Mrs.  Stieffel  said. 
"  He  was  awful  disappointed,  but  he  acted  real  nice 
about  it,  staying  and  talking  like  he'd  come  to  see  all 
of  us  —  only  he  talked  about  you  most  of  the  time,  of 
course ;  a  man  can't  pretend  very  good.  I  always  did 
like  Jim  Marvin,  whatever  they  say  about  him," 
Maggie  protested  irrelevantly.  "  Why  didn't  you  tell 
him  yourself  you  were  at  the  office  evenings,  Nettie? 
Seems  a  kinda  pity  the  poor  fellow  coming  out  here 
expecting  to  see  you.  I  could  see  it  worried  him 
your  working  so  hard.  '  Peabody's  making  a  slave 
of  her.  He's  a  reg'lar  slave-driver,'  he  kept  saying. 
And  he  wanted  to  know  what  it  was  you  had  to  do. 
He  said  you  might  get  writer's  cramp,  or  hurt  your 
eyes  or  something." 

"  For  the  gracious'  sake,  Jim  Marvin  should  worry 
about  me,  shouldn't  he?"  ejaculated  Nettie  with 
amused  skepticism.  But  the  account  touched  her,  in 
spite  of  herself.  Jim  was  really  fond  of  her  in  his 
way  —  his  scoundrel's  way, 

It  was  one  night  a  week  or  so  later  that  she  went 
back  to  the  office  after  supper  at  the  Kentucky 
Kitchen,  as  usual,  to  finish  up  a  sheaf  of  letters.  The 
streets  and  the  building  itself  were  sparsely  lighted  in 
obedience  to  conservation  orders,  and  Nettie  had  to 
climb  the  half-dozen  flights  of  stairs  to  the  office  floor; 
the  elevator  ran  only  till  six  o'clock,  and  all  the  girl 
operators  had  gone  home,  though  there  were  offices 
still  open  here  and  there  throughout  the  big  structure. 
Nobody  complained  of  these  inconveniences;  it  was 
all  in  the  day's  work.     Nettie  stoically  climbed.     She 


THE  NOON-MARK  321 

passed  the  rooms  vacated  by  the  Ohio  Valley  &  West- 
ern Railway  when  the  Government  took  it  over;  the 
gilt  lettering  was  still  on  the  windows  obscured  by 
the  posters  of  the  Fourth  Liberty  Loan.  On  the  next 
floor,  a  firm  of  brokers  had  collapsed  last  spring  as  a 
remote  result  of  the  Allied  reverses;  their  rooms  had 
recently  been  opened  to  accommodate  a  rummage- 
sale  for  the  benefit  of  Devastated  France ;  it  was  dark 
and  still  in  there  among  the  discarded  party-dresses 
and  out-of-date  hats,  the  Victorian  steel-engravings, 
the  wash-stand  sets  and  crippled  furniture.  Nettie 
climbed  past  them,  past  the  real-estate  office  on  the 
succeeding  landing,  past  the  Bemis-Cadwallader  Soap 
Company  —  sadly  depopulated  regions,  all  of  them. 
"Looks  as  if  they'd  have  to  turn  this  side  of  the 
building  into  tenements  or  barracks  for  the  soldiers 
or  something,  directly,"  she  mused.  "  It's  lonesome 
after  dark  this  way  —  it's  lonesome  even  in  the  broad 
daylight." 

The  lonesomeness  did  not  affect  her  determination 
to  work,  however.  She  reached  her  own  territory, 
and  went  in  and  turned  on  the  light,  and  set  to  at  the 
letters.  It  was  after  nine  before  she  got  through,  and 
began  clearing  away  in  preparation  for  to-morrow. 
In  Mr.  Peabody's  room  there  was  some  disorder,  and 
that  day's  collection  of  blue-prints  was  still  lying  to 
one  side  where  he  must  have  piled  it  to  make  a  space 
for  writing.  Nettie  stacked  the  sheets  in  order,  ling- 
ering to  admire  the  exquisite  precision  of  the  mechan- 
ical drawings.  They  were  the  plans  for  the  big  gun- 
lathe  they  were  going  to  build  for  the  Government  out 
at  the  Kirk's  Station  shops  —  the  biggest  gun-lathe 
in  the  world,  capable  of  boring  an  eighteen-inch  gun, 
the  biggest  gun  in  the  world.     When  finished,  this 


322  THE  NOON-MARK 

leviathan  tool  would  be  the  length  of  a  city  square; 
the  men  would  take  a  week  to  knock  it  down  and  pack 
it  for  shipment  to  the  United  States  Navy-Yard  at 
Norfolk;  fourteen  flat  cars  would  be  needed  for  the 
transportation ;  it  would  cost  half  a  million  dollars  — 
"  And  when  that  gun  gets  on  the  job,  she'll  blow  the 
Germans  to  hell-and-gone ! "  one  of  the  designers  had 
said,  nervously  exultant.  "  Oh,  I  —  I  beg  your  par- 
don, Miss  — !  "  Nettie  smiled  to  recall  his  abashed 
face.     She  looked  up  — 

"  Hello !  "  said  Jim,  standing  at  the  inner  door. 

In  one  second,  a  dozen  half-framed  thoughts  raced 
through  Nettie's  head  —  that  this  part  of  the  building 
was  practically  deserted  —  that  Marvin  had  been  spy- 
ing on  her  and  the  office  with  his  pertinacious  atten- 
tions—  that  the  story  about  his  being  a  Federal  agent 
was  too  thin  —  that  he  might  be  anybody's  agent  — 
that  something  might  easily  have  leaked  out  where  so 
many  people  were  employed  as  at  the  Peabody  Tool 
Works  —  that  he  had  never  harmed  her  —  that  he 
was  a  scoundrel  —  that  he  was  in  love  with  her  — 
that  his  presence  might  not  mean  anything  —  that,  at 
any  rate,  nobody  had  any  business  there  at  such  an 
hour  except  herself.     She  made  a  strong  effort. 

"  Why,  hello  yourself,  Sherlock !  I  didn't  hear  you 
come  in." 

"  I  made  enough  noise,"  said  Jim.  "  The  folks  told 
me  you  were  here  every  night,  and  I  saw  the  lights, 
but  I  began  to  think  maybe  you'd  gone  away  and  left 
'em  burning." 

There  was  nothing  amiss  with  this  statement,  save 
that  he  had  not  made  any  noise ;  Nettie  was  very  sure 
he  had  not  made  any  noise.     And  why  this  deliberate 


THE  NOON-MARK  323 

stealth?  "I  didn't  hear  you,"  she  repeated,  her  dis- 
trust congealing. 

"  Nobody  round  here  but  you?  "  said  Jim,  saunter- 
ing in  with  over-acted  negligence  of  movement  —  or 
so  it  seemed  to  her  watchful  suspicion.  "  Say,  Nettie, 
that's  not  very  safe,  is  it?  " 

"  You  should  worry!  "  Nettie  retorted,  quoting  her- 
self mechanically;  to  her  direct  character  speech  that 
did  not  express  her  thought  was  well-nigh  an  impossi- 
bility; and  just  now  her  mind  revolved  in  blankness. 
She  kept  on  matching  the  prints  together,  and  the  feel 
of  them  under  her  hands,  within  her  defenses,  steadied 
her.  "  It's  safe  enough,  I  guess.  I'm  not  afraid 
anyhow." 

"  No,  you're  never  afraid  of  anything,"  said  Jim 
with  a  laugh.  He  stood  in  the  center  of  the  room, 
with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  staring  around  idly. 
"  This  is  J.  P.'s  same  old  cozy  corner.  Looks  like 
home  to  me.  Aren't  you  going  to  ask  me  to  sit 
down?" 

"  Why  no,  Jim,  I  wasn't  thinking  of  it,"  said  Nettie 
coolly.  "  I  was  going  to  tell  you  to  go,  if  you  want 
to  know  what  I  was  going  to  do." 

"  But  I  never  have  a  chance  to  see  you  or  talk  to 
you,  Nettie,"  he  remonstrated  in  an  injured  tone, 
drawing  nearer  her.  "  You  won't  let  me.  I'll  have 
to  be  going  away  again  soon,  and  I  got  to  thinking 
maybe  I  wouldn't  have  another  chance,  if  I  didn't 
come  up  here  to-night.  I  know  Peabody  hasn't  got 
any  use  for  me,  and  I  didn't  want  to  get  you  in  bad 
with  him  or  I'd  have  come  in  the  day-time,  office-hours 
or  no  office-hours,"  he  explained  humbly,  candidly  — 
if  only  she  could  have  believed  him !     "  What's  the 


324  THE  NOON-MARK 

matter,  Nettie?  You  know  how  I  feel  about  you. 
You  know  what  it  is  I  want  to  talk  to  you  about. 
You're  not  mad  at  me,  are  you?  You're  not  going  to 
turn  me  down  again?     What's  the  matter?  " 

What  the  matter  was,  Nettie  did  not  know.  His 
face  and  gesture  were  lover-like ;  there  was  no  parallel 
between  his  decent  feeling  decently  expressed  and  the 
besmirching  sensualities  of  such  a  creature  as  Mark- 
lein.  Nettie  had  not  feared  Marklein  in  the  least, 
she  merely  hated  him;  whereas  she  knew  herself  to 
be  afraid  of  Jim,  but  with  the  difference  that  she  was 
not  afraid  for  herself.  She  stood  behind  the  table, 
her  eyes  following  his  every  motion,  her  senses  taut. 
"  You've  got  to  go,  Jim.  You  can't  come  and  stay 
around  here  day  or  night  or  any  other  time.  I  can't 
listen  to  you.     You've  got  to  go." 

"  Oh,  Nettie,  please ! ';  He  came  nearer  still,  reach- 
ing as  if  for  her  hand.  Nettie  made  a  movement. 
"What  are  you  grabbing  at  those  papers  for?"  said 
Marvin,  apparently  surprised;  then  he  laughed  in- 
dulgently. "  Why,  I  believe  you  think  I'm  after 
them !  I  don't  even  know  what  they  are.  Maps?  " 
He  put  out  his  hand  again. 

To  the  day  of  her  death  Nettie  will  be  convinced 
that  he  meant  and  had  meant  all  along  to  get  the  blue- 
prints, although  actually  nothing  that  he  said  or  did 
indicated  any  such  dark  purpose.  She  will  swear  up 
and  down  that  as  he  kept  coming  closer  to  her,  she 
saw  his  shoulders  move  and  the  position  of  his  whole 
body  alter  as  if  the  muscles  were  contracting  in  readi- 
ness for  a  sudden  and  violent  movement.  It  may  all 
have  been  her  fancy;  nobody  will  ever  know.  She 
swept  the  drawings  behind  her  to  the  floor;  she 
screamed  out;  she  snatched  the  nearest  weapon. 


THE  NOON-MARK  325 

"  No,  you  don't,  Jim  Marvin,  you  don't  put  it  over 
me  that  way!  I  know  you,  you  crook!  Get  out  of 
here !     Get  quick,  or  — !  " 

And  with  another  scream,  an  oath,  a  thump  on  the 
floor,  with  the  table  scraping,  with  a  chair  slamming 
over  and  glass  splintering,  and  more  screams  upon 
screams,  the  thing  happened.  When  help  rushed  in, 
they  found  Nettie  still  screaming  hysterically,  the 
blue-prints  —  by  good  luck  uninjured  —  scattering 
everywhere,  Marvin  half-stunned  and  groaning  on  the 
floor,  a  ghastly  sight  with  blood  running  down  from 
the  gash  in  his  forehead,  and  the  whole  wild  scene 
enveloped  in  an  unholy  aroma  of  ink. 

For,  if  Nettie  had  only  known  it,  strong-arm  meas- 
ures were  not  necessary.  Amos  had  arrived  with  the 
car  that  night,  on  time  as  usual ;  and  after  performing 
the  little  obligato  on  the  horn  several  times  at  inter- 
vals without  any  signs  of  or  from  her,  who  was  in- 
variably so  prompt,  he  began  to  be  uneasy.  Perhaps 
about  the  unlighted  streets  and  the  silent,  gloomy 
building,  a  sixth  sense  inherited  from  some  jungle- 
living  ancestor  detected  something  forbidding  or  of 
evil  omen.  At  any  rate,  Amos  was  a  good,  faithful 
darky,  a  respectable  man  with  young  daughters  of 
his  own,  and  quite  alive  to  his  responsibilities.  He 
waited  in  growing  disquiet.  He  did  not  like  to  leave 
the  car,  and  it  may  be  the  flight  of  stairs  daunted  him 
with  his  lameness ;  for  the  same  reasons,  according  to 
his  subsequent  statements,  he  did  not  "  projeck  er- 
roun'  "  in  search  of  the  janitor  or  the  night-watchman. 
They  might  be  up  on  the  sixteenth  floor,  if  indeed  they 
were  in  the  neighborhood  at  all,  of  which  he  had  not 
ill-founded  doubts.  In  this  dilemma  as  he  fidgetted 
on  the  curb,  along  came  two  soldiers,  on  furlough  from 


326  THE  NOON-MARK 

Fort  William  across  the  river;  Amos  laid  the  situa- 
tion before  them.  They  were  respectively  twenty  and 
twenty-one  years  old,  Private  Leon  Casanova  from 
New  York  City  originally,  and  Private  Jackson  Bodie 
of  Bolivar,  Alabama ;  they  had  been  to  a  movie  of  raw 
life  in  the  West :  "  Men  With  The  Bark  On  " ;  and 
nothing  could  give  them  greater  pleasure  than  to 
rescue  the  lady  if  she  needed  rescuing.  The  queer 
thing  is  that  as  this  volunteer  posse  went  galumphing 
up  the  stairs  in  heavy  marching  boots,  Nettie  and  her 
visitor  did  not  hear  them ;  when  Casanova  and  Bodie 
reached  the  fourth  landing,  they  heard  the  screams 
clearly  and  unmistakably  enough  —  Oh,  boy! 

"And  after  all,  when  we  got  there,  there  wasn't 
nothing  left  to  do  but  kinda  pick  up  the  pieces !  "  said 
Leon,  in  disappointment.  "  Bodie  here,  he  says  to 
her  i  My  God,  ma'am !  '  he  says,  '  Did  he  do  anything 
to  youse?  '  He  didn't  like  to  put  it  no  plainer  than 
that,  y'know,  but  these  Southerners,  they  think  of 
that,  the  first  thing,  and  Bodie  he  wasn't  going  to 
wait  for  no  cop.  He  was  all  set  to  drop  the  guy  outa 
the  window  — " 

"  Shut  up,  you  wop !  "  said  Bodie  amiably ;  "  I 
wasn't  aimin'  to  do  no  sech  a  thing." 

"  She  was  all  excited  and  crying,  but  she  fin'lly  got 
out  that  he  hadn't  hurt  her.  She  beat  him  to  it ! " 
said  the  other  young  man  with  a  grin.  "  He  made  a 
stab  at  the  papers  or  whatever  it  was,  and  she  hauled 
off  and  beaned  him  with  the  ink-stand  —  one  of  these 
big  square  glass  ink-stands,  y'know,  that  spread  out 
at  the  bottom  and  weigh  half  a  ton.  She  aimed 
good,  too  —  caught  him  right  over  the  eye — Zowie! 
What  d'ye  know  about  that,  for  a  woman  throwing !  " 

"plan  to  burglarize  offices  of  peabody  tool 


THE  NOON-MARK  327 

WORKS    FOILED    BY    PLUCKY    STENOGRAPHER.      YEGGMAN 
TAKEN    TO    HOSPITAL    IN    SERIOUS    CONDITION.      SOLDIER 

boys  render  timely  assistance/'  the  morning  papers 
proclaimed  with  as  much  attention  to  the  facts  as 
morning-papers  commonly  display.  Undoubtedly  the 
occurrence  would  have  been  "  featured  n  in  further 
issues  in  peace  times;  but  this  was  during  our  advance 
in  the  Argonne,  and  nobody  was  deeply  interested  in 
home  news,  however  sensational.  Besides  there  was 
not  much  information  forthcoming.  Nettie  had  to 
take  two  or  three  days  of  rest  and  absolute  quiet  — 
doctor's  orders  —  so  that  the  reporters  must  be  de- 
nied ;  Amos  and  the  two  privates  knew  no  more  than 
has  been  recited;  Mr.  Peabody  was  most  affable  but 
non-committal ;  Marvin  at  the  hospital  —  not  in  a 
"  serious  condition,"  however  —  would  probably  have 
refused  an  interview  in  extremely  positive  not  to  say 
violent  language,  had  the  authorities  allowed  anyone 
to  see  him ;  even  Rochester  Avenue  never  knew  all  the 
details;  even  the  Stieffel  household  and  Maggie  her- 
self, influenced  in  some  occult  fashion  by  Mr.  Pea- 
body's  personality,  for  once  could  not  be  beguiled 
into  gossip.  In  fine,  the  circumstances  were  such 
that  the  story,  so  to  speak,  died  a  natural  death,  and 
has  never  been  resurrected  from  that  day  to  this. 

It  was  as  much  by  Mr.  Peabody's  orders  as  by 
Doctor  White's  that  Nettie  took  that  recess  —  orders 
under  which  she  was  inclined  to  fret  a  good  deal. 
James  showed  himself  "  awful  appreciative,"  as  Mag- 
gie noticed  with  weak  surprise  and  wonder;  she  did 
not  believe  that  the  bank  or  Mr.  Marklein  would  have 
done  so  much.  Nettie's  employer  sent  a  trained 
nurse,  whom  they  prevailed  upon  to  go  away,  seeing 
that  she  was  not  actively  needed ;  he  sent  flowers,  sent 


328  THE  NOON-MARK 

candy,  sent  a  beautiful  antique  Bohemian  glass  toy 
from  the  dressing-table  of  some  eighteenth-century 
great  lady,  filled  with  some  sort  of  rare  and  sinfully 
costly  smelling-salts;  he  sent  the  automobile  daily  to 
take  Nettie  out  for  an  airing ;  and  finally  came  him- 
self on  the  Sunday  following  the  excitement.  By  a 
miracle,  in  which  Nettie  herself  undoubtedly  had  a 
hand,  the  house  was  in  fair  order.  It  was  she  who 
opened  the  door,  answering  his  exclamation  of  con- 
cern with  all  her  natural  spirit. 

"  Oh,  stuff ! "  she  said  briskly,  forgetting  for  a  mo- 
ment the  august  eminence  of  the  person  addressed. 
The  fact  is  James  did  not  look  at  all  august ;  he  looked 
like  a  nice  middle-aged  gentleman  with  something  on 
his  mind.  "  Oh,  stuff!  "  said  Nettie;  "  I'm  all  right, 
and  there  never  was  anything  the  matter  with  me 
anyhow  —  except  I  got  a  little  excited." 

She  led  him  into  the  dining-room,  and  they  sat  down 
on  opposite  sides  of  the  table,  very  much  as  they  were 
in  the  habit  of  sitting  day  in  and  day  out  at  the  office. 
"  I'm  coming  back  to-morrow." 
"Are  you  sure  you're  well  enough?" 
"  Well,  just  look  at  me !     Do  I  look  sick?     Oh,  I've 
got  to  Mr.  Peabody,  I  just  must! "  said  Nettie  vehem- 
ently.    "  I  can't  stay  around  here  doing  nothing  this 

way." 

"  I  wish  some  of  the  others  felt  that  way,"  he  said 
with  a  smile,  which  vanished  as  his  eyes  traveled  slow- 
ly over  her;  perceptibly  there  was  something  on  his 
mind.  "  They  aren't  like  you,  though.  They  couldn't 
be  if  they  tried.  For  that  matter  I  doubt  if  there  are 
many  women  anywhere  who  would  sail  into  a  thug 
with  an  ink-stand,  because  they  thought  he  was  going 
to  steal  some  blue-prints  — " 


THE  NOON-MARK  329 

"  Mr.  Peabody,  he  was  going  to  take  them !  I 
didn't  just  think  he  was!"  said  Nettie  obstinately. 
"  You  can't  tell  me  anything  about  Jim  Marvin.  I 
know  him  through  and  through.  He  didn't  mean  to 
hurt  me  if  he  could  help  it.  But  I  saw  him  getting 
ready;  he  went  just  like  a  cat  does  when  it's  going  to 
jump  on  a  bird  or  something  —  just  that  same  way. 
I  had  to  do  something!  " 

"  Well,  you  did  it !  "  said  James.  "  Up  at  the  hos- 
pital they  had  to  put  in  five  stitches.  The  doctors 
thought  at  first  there  might  be  some  trouble  on  ac- 
count of  that  ink ;  but  I  daresay  the  smell's  the  worst 
part  of  it.  Anyhow  they  washed  Marvin  up  with 
antiseptics,  and  they  say  there's  no  danger  of 
blood-poisoning.  He's  healing.  Scarred  for  life, 
though." 

"What  are  they  going  to  do  with  him,  Mr.  Pea- 
body?  " 

He  made  a  comic  wry  face.  "Why,  Nettie,  it's  a 
funny  thing,  but  as  far  as  I'm  concerned  and  the 
attempt  on  the  office,  it's  just  the  same  as  that  other 
time.  Can't  do  anything !  There's  nothing  he  could 
be  held  for.  He  didn't  break  in ;  he  didn't  take  any- 
thing, and  you  can't  even  swear  that  he  tried  to.  He 
didn't  attack  you.  You  attacked  him!"  James 
laughed  outright.     "You  see?" 

Nettie  saw,  but  she  refused  to  laugh.  "Yes, 
but  — " 

"  Wait  a  minute.  They  think  they'll  get  him  on  an 
entirely  different  count.  It  seems  he  told  several 
people  that  he  was  an  agent  for  the  Department  of 
Justice.     Of  course,  he  was  nothing  of  the  kind — " 

"  I  guess  he  was  working  for  the  other  side,  wasn't 
he?     Seems  as  if  he  was  just  the  sort  of  man  they'd 


330  THE  NOON-MAKK 

hire,  and  that  was  just  the  sort  of  thing  they'd  want 
him  to  do." 

"  Well,  the  officials  are  very  close-mouthed  about 
everything  like  that.  Personally  I  never  have  be- 
lieved in  all  these  German  spy  yarns,  you  know ;  I'm 
confident  there's  not  one  in  twenty  of  'em  that's  the 
truth  or  anywhere  near  it.  People  seem  to  think 
this  ought  to  convert  me  —  but  it  hasn't.  Anyhow, 
impersonating  a  Government  officer  is  a  serious  of- 
fense, so  I  fear  —  I  greatly  fear  — "  said  Mr.  Peabody, 
wagging  his  head  in  burlesque  anxiety  — "  that  it's 
all  up  with  our  friend  Marvin.  Too  bad !  A  promis- 
ing career  cut  short !  " 

"  Yes,  he  told  me  that  —  about  his  being  in  the 
Secret  Service,  I  mean,"  Nettie  said.  "  But  I  — 
why,  I  didn't  really  believe  him.  I  don't  see  how 
anybody  could  believe  him." 

Mr.  Peabody  rubbed  one  ear  reflectively.  "  It  does 
strike  one  as  not  quite  in  the  spirit  of  justice  to  clap 
a  man  in  jail  for  telling  a  story  that  nobody  believed," 
he  said;  and  this  time  Nettie  joined  in  his  laugh.  "  I 
think  myself  the  miserable  shoddy  rascal  is  punished 
enough  as  it  is,"  said  James  humanely.  "  Being 
marked  for  life  will  be  a  grave  handicap  to  him  when 
he  gets  out  and  begins  his  flimflamming  again.  But 
he  was  headed  for  State's  prison  sooner  or  later,  any- 
how, Nettie.  It's  a  marvel  that  he's  escaped  this 
long." 

There  was  a  silence. 

"  Oh,  I  called  you  Nettie! "  said  Mr.  Peabody,  pre- 
cipitately.    "  I  beg  your  pardon." 

"  Why,  I  don't  mind." 

Another  silence  of  oppressive  length,  James'  pre- 


THE  NOON-MARK  331 

occupation  settling  down  on  him  again.  Nettie  me- 
chanically plaited  and  unplaited  the  fringe  of  the 
red  plush  table-runner  in  an  embarrassment  such  as 
she  never  felt  when  alone  with  Mr.  Peabody  in  the 
office.  But  there  is  a  difference  between  sitting 
closeted  with  a  man  taking  his  dictation,  and  sitting 
with  the  same  man  when  by  an  abnormal  chance  he 
has  come  to  call  on  you.  Their  positions  seemed 
somehow  to  be  reversed ;  he  was  no  longer  the  boss,  he 
was  only  a  man,  and  not  wholly  at  his  ease  either,  it 
was  obvious.  The  introduction  of  some  kindly,  famil- 
iar theme  such  as  gears,  templets  or  castings  would 
relieve  the  situation  mightily,  but  it  was  impossible. 
However,  something  must  be  done.  "  Have  those 
Selden-McLeod  people  ever  answered  anything  about 
that  milling-machine  yet,  Mr.  Peabody?  " 

He  started  abruptly,  looking  at  her  as  if  his  mind 
had  been  incalculably  removed  from  Seldon-McLeod 
and  milling-machinery,  and  as  if  it  were  incalculably 
difficult  to  bring  it  to  bear  on  those  matters.  "I  — 
I  don't  know."  This  was  his  astounding  reply.  "  I 
haven't  paid  much  attention  to  —  to  all  that  since 
you've  been  away.  I  —  I  got  out  of  touch  with  it 
on  account  of  the  —  er  —  the  girls  —  the  other  girls 
not  being  quite  able  to  —  er  —  to  take  hold  of  the 
correspondence,"  James  said,  stammering  and  stum- 
bling and  turning  red  over  this  palpably  off-hand  at- 
tempt at  an  excuse.  "  Nice  girls,  all  of  them,"  he 
added  hastily,  "  but  — " 

"  Oh,  I  expect  one  of  them  could  have  taken  your 
letters,  if  you'd  tried  her,"  said  Nettie,  chivalrously 
concealing  her  satisfaction.  Far  be  it  from  Nettie 
Stieffel  to  "  knock  "  any  other  girl  —  but  of  course 


332  THE  NOON-MARK 

those  dubs  couldn't  take  Ms  letters!  They  didn't 
know  a  comma  from  a  period;  they'd  be  asking  him 
how  to  spell  every  other  word ;  they  — 

"  I've  missed  you,"  said  Jim  Peabody.  For,  with 
the  words,  Nettie  again  became  aware  with  a  sensation 
as  of  the  universe  turning  topsy-turvy  that  this  was 
Jim  Peabody  across  the  table  —  not  the  boss,  not  the 
head  of  the  Peabody  Tool-Works. 

"  That's  —  that's  —  I'm  glad  —  I  mean  a  person 
likes  to  think  they're  missed,  of  course,"  she  stam- 
mered in  her  turn.  "  Those  were  lovely  things  you 
sent." 

"  They  —  they  weren't  anything.  I'm  glad  you 
liked  them,  though.  I  wasn't  sure  what  a  girl  would 
like.     I've  never  known  many  girls." 

"  They  were  lovely,"  Nettie  repeated.  "  I'd  have 
been  a  queer  kind  of  girl  not  to  be  pleased  —  only  I'm 
not  a  girl  at  all  any  more,  Mr.  Peabody.  I'm  thirty. 
I've  had  my  thirtieth  birthday." 

"  I'm  nearly  forty-nine." 

The  compliments  that  may  suitably  be  offered  upon 
a  person's  attaining  the  age  of  forty-nine  —  if  indeed 
there  is  anything  complimentary  to  be  said  on  such 
an  occasion !  —  did  not  occur  to  Nettie ;  she  had  no 
skill  in  that  direction.  She  sat  silent,  assiduously 
plaiting  and  unplaiting. 

"  There's  a  good  deal  of  difference  in  our  ages,"  Jim 
said.  "  But  it  seems  as  if  it  didn't  count  when  two 
people  are  —  when  they  have  —  when  they  feel  — 
when  they  —  Nettie,  I  want  you  to  marry  me." 

The  skies  did  not  fall.  The  world  did  not  rock 
beneath  her  feet.  She  was  not  surprised,  because  for 
an  eternity,  beginning  some  five  seconds  previously, 
she  had  felt  what  was  approaching.     She  looked  him 


THE  NOON-MARK  333 

bravely  in  the  face.  "  Mr.  Peabody,  I  don't  think  I 
ought  to  get  married.  I've  got  the  folks  to  take  care 
0f  —  well,  I  don't  mean  that  I  take  the  whole  care  — 
we  all  work  —  but  they  couldn't  get  along  very  well 
without  me  — *' 

"They  don't  have  to.     I  would — " 

"  But  I  wouldn't  want  you  to  do  for  them,"  cried 
Nettie,  flushing.  "  Just  because  of  me.  It  wouldn't 
be  right.  And  anyway,  you  don't  help  people  at  all, 
somehow,  when  you  help  them  too  much,"  she  added, 
out  of  her  hard  experience. 

"  I  think  we  could  get  around  that  difficulty,"  said 
James  very  practically.  "  It's  like  you  not  to  want 
your  family  to  be  dependent  on  anybody  or  beholden 
to  anybody.  But  suppose  we  leave  them  out  for  a 
minute.     I  want  to  know  if — ?" 

"  Why,  I  —  I  — " 

He  came  around  to  her  side  of  the  table. 

And  so  they  were  married  and  lived  happily  ever 
after  —  at  least  Mr.  and  Mrs.  James  Peabody  have 
every  appearance  of  living  happily,  and  beyond  ques- 
tion they  live  comfortably.  For  the  rest,  how  shall 
you  and  I  guess  in  what  estate,  with  what  aspirations 
fulfilled  and  unfulfilled,  what  defeats  and  achieve- 
ments recorded,  any  single  one  of  our  fellow-men 
reaches  the  hour  of  meridian?  What  looks  like  a 
camel  may  very  well  be  a  mouse,  for  all  we  know  — 
or  the  other  way  around ! 

Not  long  since,  the  Peabody  couple  were  taking  the 
air  of  a  Sunday  evening  when  their  car  came  abreast 
of  a  little  flock  of  motors  shepherded  by  the  policemen 
in  front  of  the  splendid  temple  erected  on  one  of  our 
suburban  streets  for  the  devotional  use  of  that  sect  of 


334  THE  NOON-MAKK 

ultra-profound  and  advanced  religious  thinkers,  the 
Altruistic  Brotherhood.  The  bluecoat  held  up  his 
hand;  everybody  within  his  danger  —  to  adopt  a 
mediaeval  phrase  —  came  to  a  stand;  and  there  de- 
bouched magnificently  from  the  side  street  a  limousine 
that  only  needed  outriders  to  suggest  royalty.  It 
drew  up  before  the  flight  of  steps  leading  to  the  doors 
of  the  sanctuary,  and  accompanied  by  sundry  of  the 
faithful  in  a  dazzling  display  of  haberdashery,  the 
Leader  descended,  clothed  in  white  samite,  mystic, 
wonderful.  She  trailed  up  the  steps  with  a  kind  of 
solemn  grace;  the  reverently  admiring  Altruists  closed 
in  after  her;  volumes  of  noble  melody  rolled  abroad 
from  the  Altruistic  organ  —  it  cost  eighteen  thousand 
dollars.  No  expense  was  spared  in  the  construction 
of  the  sacred  edifice;  the  Altruists  are  substantial 
people,  and  it  is  understood  their  Leader  occupies  the 
best-salaried  pulpit  in  the  city.  One  and  all,  they 
agree  that  she  is  a  woman  of  powerful  mentality, 
whose  persuasive  eloquence  "  carries  you  right  along 
with  her."  They  would  be  willing  to  pay  almost  any 
sum  to  retain  her  services,  but  fear  that  the  bid  from 
one  of  the  big  eastern  cities  will  over-size  them. 

"  There's  your  cousin,"  said  Peabody  to  his  wife. 

"  Yes.     I  saw  her." 

The  officer  released  them ;  all  the  motors  moved  on. 
Nettie  sat  back  in  her  corner  in  a  mood  of  meditation 
lasting  so  long  that  he  inquired  after  a  while: 
"  What's  on  your  mind?  " 

"Hey?  Oh,  nothing.  I  was  just  thinking — " 
She  was  silent  again  for  a  moment,  staring  abstract- 
edly at  the  chauffeur's  back.  "  They  ask  an  awful 
price  for  those  uniforms,"  she  said  at  length.  "  Com- 
pared to  what  they  used  to  —  and  they  never  were 


THE  NOON-MARK  335 

real  cheap.     It's  expensive  keeping  up  a  machine." 

"  Well,  we'll  keep  ours  anyhow  till  we  go  broke, 
and  that  won't  be  for  quite  a  while  yet.  You  weren't 
worrying  about  that?  " 

Nettie  laughed.  "  I  wasn't  worrying  about  any- 
thing. I  just  got  to  thinking  —  seeing  Millie  started 
me,  I  belieye — "  her  yoke  trailed  off,  and  her  eyes 
grew  absent  once  more. 

'  "  Thinking  about  what?  "  Peabody  asked  with  some 
curiosity. 

She  roused  herself,  turning  to  him  a  perplexed 
smile.  "  I  was  just  thinking,  Jim,  how  funny  life  is. 
Now  take  Millie  and  I,  for  instance.  We  sort  of 
started  out  together,  and  you  might  say  we  started 
even.  We're  about  of  an  age,  you  know ;  and  we  both 
had  to  work.  Millie  was  an  awfully  pretty  girl — 
she's  pretty  as  can  be  still  — " 

"She  hasn't  got  anything  on  you!"  said  James.^ 

"  Oh  yes,  I  know  I  never  was  homely,'  said  Nettie  in 
her  simple  and  straightforward  way.  "  I  shouldn't 
be  surprised  if  I  looked  older  than  she  does  now- 
adays, though.  You  see  I  always  worked  harder,  and 
took  things  harder.  Millie  never  worked,  and  she 
never  worried  about  anything.  She  was  always  ex- 
pecting to  marry  some  rich  man  and  have  a  good  time 
the  rest  of  her  life.  I  don't  believe  she  gave  it  up  even 
when  she  got  married  to  Elmer!  And  then  she  was 
always  getting  around  the  men  in  a  —  in  a  —  a  kind 
of  woman-y  way,"  said  Nettie  uncomfortably.  "If 
you  know  what  I  mean  — ?  " 

"  Yes,  you  come  across  women  like  that  once  in  a 
while,"  said  Jim,  rather  guardedly. 

"  Well,  I  never  was  that  kind.  I  never  liked  it.  I 
thought    it    was    all    wrong  — or    silly    anyhow.     I 


336  THE  NOON-MARK 

meant  to  make  a  success  all  by  myself.  Yon  can  see 
we  were  just  opposite  —  as  opposite  as  could  be.  And 
here  we've  ended  up  even,  just  about  like  we  com- 
menced !  "  said  Nettie,  with  a  look  of  wonder. 

"  I  don't  exactly  understand  — ?  " 

"Why,  Millie's  where  she  wants  to  be,  isn't  she? 
She  has  plenty  of  money,  and  she  doesn't  work  any 
to  speak  of.  Those  old  Altruists  — !  Millie  looks 
kind  of  calm  and  lovely,  and  she  dresses  up  in  that 
Greek  way,  and  she's  got  a  nice  voice,  and  she  goes 
stringing  along  a  lot  of  —  of  — " 

"  Of  flapdoodle,"  her  husband  supplied,  nodding. 
"  Yes,  I  know." 

"  And  they  think  she's  great!  That's  all  she  cares 
about  —  to  live  easy,  and  have  people  make  a  lot  over 
her.  She  never  does  a  lick  of  real  work,  never  sets 
her  foot  to  the  ground.  She  goes  rolling  around  in 
that  elegant  car;  I  don't  know  whether  it's  hers  or 
whether  she  works  somebody  for  the  use  of  it,  but 
anyhow  there  she  is !  And  here  I  am,  rolling  around 
in  a  car,  too !  And  I've  got  everything  anybody  could 
want,  too,  same  as  she  has !  And  yet  look  how  oppo- 
site we  are  and  how  opposite  we've  always  thought 
and  acted!  It  was  thinking  about  it  that  made  me 
say  life  was  funny.  It  is  funny  —  how  you  begin  and 
how  you  end  up;  what  you  start  out  after  and  what 
you  get!  "  Nettie  summed  up,  still  puzzled,  still  won- 
dering. She  was  not  thinking  of  mice  or  camels ;  the 
quaint  little  allegory  must  have  passed  out  of  her 
memory  within  half  an  hour  of  hearing  it,  and  has 
never  revisited  her  since. 

James  Peabody  laid  his  hand  over  hers.  "  The 
thing  is :  are  you  happy?  " 

"Oh,  my,  yes,  I'm  happy." 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY, 
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